Beat the rain and got in a 5.5 mile/2 hour hike at Afton State Park I heard but never saw an Eastern Meadowlark several times in the upland prairie. While looking at an oddly shaped mullen from last year with hopes that the bulge on top was the Meadowlark, I did see two sandhill cranes in the distance flying up the St. Croix River valley. I thought I heard killdeers at the bottom of the downhill ski area below the prairie portion of the trail but I later found myself doubting it.
When I got down the hill to the river, I heard the skittering call of a Bald Eagle. I scanned down river from the beach and noticed a nest in a tree off the cove south of the beach. I missed the eagle sitting in the nest at first but caught sight of it when I rescanned. Later saw three more Eagles out on the ice north of the beach. They were adjacent to a small open channel - 1 mature and 2 mottled juveniles. Saw the usual chickadees and, just as I wondered why they weren't still around, a junco. As I came out of the trees on to the prairie after climbing out of the river valley, I came upon a flock of about 25 foraging Robins. When I reached the shelter at the intersection with trail circling the prairie, there were possibly the same flock of Robins in the tree next to shelter. As I walked past, I heard a noise that caused me to look around to find its source until I realized it was Robins that I had spooked and that had taken off simultaneously. As I departed in my car from the NW trail access, I drove the section of road immediately adjacent to nothe river that leads to downtown Afton and saw a Common Loon in the open water north of the ice where I previously saw the 3 eagles. ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
