Yesterday at the Bass Ponds in Bloomington I had a large bird fly overhead. I watched it fly west over the entirety of the ponds toward the Cedar Avenue bridge and beyond, yet have no clue what I saw.
>From underneath it appeared light in color (white or perhaps a light grayish >throughout) with no distinct markings, except for the wings. The upperside of >the wings appeared entirely white, so I presumed the large, long-winged bird >to be an egret. But then I saw the underside of the wings, which had a thick >white stripe throughout the entire wing, lined with black on all edges. This >pattern was superficially similar to a Willet, but with much more white and >much less black. Very much like many Shearwater or Petrel's underwing >pattern. The bird also was larger than any Willets I've seen. The bird flew >pretty fast with deep wing beats and sharply pointed wing tips, not unlike >falcons and some other raptors. I've looked at all the shorebirds, waders, >gulls and raptors and I can't find anything that looks like what I saw. >Unfortunately, I could not decipher bill length or shape. Any ideas? Thanks for reading! Kyle TePoel St. Paul ---- Join or Leave mou-net:http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives:http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
