I took my two children down by the Old Cedar Ave. bridge this evening and the birding was great! There were plenty of Rusty Blackbirds along the aforementioned Wilson's Snipe, Greater Yellowlegs and Great Egret. The place is also dripping with American Robins, Eastern Bluebirds, Cedar Waxwings and various woodpeckers. I found a fabulous mixed flock of Harris's Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, Lincoln's Sparrow, Swamp Sparrow, Song Sparrow, and American Goldfinch in some scrubby grass area. There was also a pair of Sandhill Cranes flying over west of the parking lot.
I did take a peak (from the road of course) at the trail that runs to the east and I was pretty shocked at the landscape change! There are probably about 30% of the trees and 15% of the shrubs that used to live in the area. It looks like along with the bridge there is some other massive project that is going on that required giant land-moving vehicles that essentially flatten anything in their path. It did look somewhat like a human created oak-savannah type habitat though and could benefit some species of birds. Seeing this along with the dramatic changes to the Thomas Sandler Roberts Bird Sanctuary on the north side of Lake Harriet is a little hard to swallow even if they were "necessary" city/county projects. Good Birding, Jason Caddy Minneapolis-Kingfield ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
