2007 Birds 111-116

I'm slowing adding birds at this point. They are getting harder and harder to find. The trees are thick with leaves and I've spotted many of the common birds already. On Memorial Day I walked around Lake Como with Chelsey and Odin. Near the spit of land that juts out into the lake I heard a warbling call and soon spotted a little bird flitting around in the bushes. the call sounded familiar and as I tried to match it up to a mnemonic it suddenly hit me. "I'll hug you and squish you and squeeze you till you squirt." Who could forget that one! It was a warbling vireo. Not a flashy bird but the call makes up for that. Coincidence?

On Saturday, June 9th I started the day out teaching a fossil hunting class at Lilydale Regional Park in St. Paul. While I waited for participants in the dirt patch that passes for a parking lot I heard a call and grabbed my small binocs out of the trunk. It was a first year male American redstart. I wish it was a mature male as then it would have been red instead of yellow. I'm going to count this as my first sighting of they year. I saw one from really far away in the bog at work earlier in the season but this was a much better sighting. Later that same day I went out on a hike with Paul over to the farmstead across the road from the nature center to look for birds during a BioBlitz at work. We spotted warbling vireos there too and we could even see that they had been banded.

June 11th, Paul and I ate lunch quickly and then headed out for a quick drive to look for a bobolink where he had spotted one earlier. We didn't see any there but did see a bunch of Eastern meadowlarks. We did finally catch a glimpse of a bobolink and hear the call near the corner of Norell and co rd. 4. That's a rich corner!

June 13th Paul, Julia and I headed out to the bog at Warner for a short hike. We actually wanted to see if there were any northern waterthrushs but we heard something else instead. We soon found a bird up in a tree at the south end that from behind we thought might be a red-eyed vireo. When it turned around though we caught a spectacular view of a yellow-throated vireo. It was simply beautiful.

Later in the day on June 13th we went canoing on Lake Terrapin to train in some staff on procedures and up at the top of the lake we spotted a pair of loons with two babies. Great stuff. The babies were riding on their parents backs. I had heard loons all spring but this was weirdly my first sighting.

Finally, rounding out the list is the simple and beautiful blue-grey gnatcatcher. Today, June 14th, Paul pointed them out at the very beginning of the work day as a bunch of them were hanging out right by the parking area at work.

REVISION
I listed Fox Sparrow Twice so I started re-numbering down by 1 with this post.

111 Warbling vireo
112 American redstart
113 Bobolink
114 Yellow-throated vireo
115 Common loon
116 Blue-grey gnatcatcher