Following a tip from Lars Benson, Doug Stucki and I drove out to St. John's University campus this morning to look for Bohemian waxwings, but we were unsuccessful. Admittedly, it was two days after Lars saw them, but - you never know!
On the way back through St. Cloud we checked the VA campus for crossbills - nothing - but did find a common merganser on the Sauk River at the back of the campus, and a very friendly female pileated woodpecker that let us stop and look at her just a few feet from the car! We checked both sides of the Mississippi River (Stearns and Benton Counties) and found lots of mallards and Canada geese, a few common mergansers, but more common goldeneyes than there have been lately, so that was encouraging. There were also 4 trumpeter swans on the river. Most fun bird of the day was a red-shouldered hawk on the south side of Hwy. 23 about 4 miles north/east of St. Cloud. It was sitting in a tree adjacent to the large green and white "Lamar" billboard sign. This is the same spot there was a red-shouldered hawk early last year. Betsy Beneke St. Cloud, Benton 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
