I was without a vehicle (and without my trusted birding partner / wife) this weekend so I only birded areas I could reach easily on foot from my house near Bush Lake. Today I hit Bush Lake, Hyland Lake, Richardson Nature Center, and points in-between, and rang up 71 species (It should have been more! Lots of "normal" birds (like Great Egrets) have been oddly AWOL.). Including a few other species I got on Friday and Saturday in the same locales, as well as nearby Anderson Lake, I got 75. FOYs for me in this area:
Bell's vireo House wren Sedge wren Eastern kingbird Ovenbird Chestnut-sided Wilson's N. Waterthrush Orange-crowned Tennessee Lincoln's sparrow Veery (seen and not heard! as opposed to the usual heard and not seen!) Grey-cheeked and Swainson's thrushes Baltimore oriole Spotted sandpiper I doubt that the Hyland area was any different from other sites in central Minnesota, in that this weekend has been certified Yellow-Rumped Madness. At Richardson nature center at a small pond, there were some downed trees over the water that hosted so many Butterbutts that it looked like a beehive with huge blue-gray and yellow bees! -Good birding, Michael Hurben Hennepin Co. ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
