Yesterday morning I found a nice mixed flock of Geese on the golf course in
Two Harbors. There was one adult and one juvenile Ross's Goose and one hybrid
Ross's X Snow Goose and there were at least two Cackling Geese along with many
intermediate sized Canada Geese and, of course, the larger Canada Geese and a
few Snow Geese. Other birds in Two Harbors included Horned Grebes,
White-crowned Sparrows, Lapland Longspurs, American Tree Sparrows, Horned
Larks, and tons of Pine Siskin.
I left to head to Park Point when a friend of mine called and advised me of a
possible California Gull at Wisconsin Point so I headed there instead, to the
first parking lot. There was a already a huge raucous of gulls when I arrived
because the local birders were chumming the waters with bread and it had become
a full-on gull bonanza. The majority of the birds were Herring and Ring-billed
Gulls but there were several first-cycle Thayer's, a lone first-cycle Iceland,
a beautiful first-cycle Glaucous and a first-cycle California Gull. The
California Gull had a pale nape and was very fun to study and compare to the
other gulls of the area. A Parasitic Jaeger swooped in twice to harass some
gulls but both times it was fairly distant. My friend spotted a Northern
Goshawk flying overhead and I picked out a flock of Snow Bunting with one
Lapland Longspur flying over the lake. Later still, a huge first-cycle Great
Black-backed Gull joined the party. The whole experience was fantastic! There
was beautiful weather, friends to talk to, and a large flock of gulls that were
so close to shore that we hardly even used our scopes, just binoculars. What a
great birding community we have here in Minnesota! Oh wait, we were in
Wisconsin :-)
Cheers,
Jason Caddy
Minneapolis
j.ca...@hotmail.com
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