SD Shorebird Workshop Yellowlegs

Out of all of the shorebirds perhaps the most difficult to tell the difference between is the greater and lesser yellowlegs. According to The Sibley Guide the lesser is smaller with a shorter bill and it appears elongated and delicate. However these field markings are difficult to tell unless you have a greater and lesser near each other to compare.

At the shorebird workshop that I attended back in August, 7th - 10th, we were told that an easier way to distinguish the difference is that the greater appears to have a two toned bill compared to the single colored bill on the lesser. If you look at the first photo in the post you will see that the bill appears lighter at the base and gets darker as it gets nearer to the tip. Now compare that to the bird above who's bill appears to be a solid color. You may also notice that the bill on the greater, first pic, is slightly curved up compared to the very straight bill of the lesser.
It is also possible to confuse a yellowlegs with a solitary sandpiper. However solitary sandpiper have a much more defined white eye ring and there is much more noticeable contrast between the dark shoulder of the solitary and its lighter breast.
In flight yellowlegs are easily identified because there legs extend back behind the tail. This is true for both lesser and greater so to distinguish between the two type you need to look at the bill again. Since this bird has a straight solid black bill we would ID it as a lesser yellowlegs.

One bird that I forgot to mention, that is also easy to mistake for a yellow legs, is the stilt sandpiper. I mistakenly originally put in my stilt pics in place of my greater yellowlegs on this post. So I made the mistake even after taking the workshop. Fortunately one of my readers saw my error and sent me an e-mail, thanks Mike. I have now corrected the pics.
The stilt sandpiper has more of a scale type of pattern on the back compared to the spotted pattern of the yellowlegs. It also has a shorter stockier bill.

Duluth Shorebirds

I spent much of the day today up at Duluth, MN birding Park Point and Hawk Ridge. It was a pretty good day with some nice looks as a few raptors moved through between 1:00 and 3:00. Unfortunately I don't have time to process the pictures at the moment since I am doing some work from home but I do have some more pictures that I took when I was up in Duluth for Hawk Weekend back on September 20th.
After spending a full day of birding between Park Point and Hawk Ridge a call came in to Debbie Waters, the Hawk Ridge Educational Director, that some local birders had possibly spotted a Pacific golden plover down in Duluth. Since things were pretty much over up on the ridge I got directions and headed out to see if I could find the bird.

When I got to the location where the bird had supposedly been spotted I ran into many of the prolific birders of the area, as well as a few from down in the Twin Cities. Pacific golden plovers are extremely rare in Minnesota, I don't think that one has ever been spotted in the state. While scanning the mudflats we spotted a few pectoral sandpipers, the two pictures above.
There were also a couple of yellow legs. You can tell that this is a lesser yellow legs because its beak is a single color. If it was a greater yellow legs it would have a two-toned bill.
We also spotted several black-bellied plover. It is not uncommon to find black bellied plovers mixed in groups with other shorebirds. Black bellies are wary and will issue a warning call if they sense danger making them a good safety system for the other birds.Several of the birders earlier in the day had spotted what they believed to be the Pacific gold and noticed that the bird was injured but had lost it when it was flushed by a merlin falcon. So when we found a limping plover we thought that we might have our bird Unfortunately it was located where we could not get a good look at it and we also could not get any closer with out the risk of sinking into the mud, like Jim did earlier.
Eventually the bird moved and we were able to tell that it was not a Pacific but it was American golden plover instead. American golden plover are fairly common in Minnesota during the migration. They breed up in the Arctic circle and spend their winters in South America. During migration they travel through out much of the eastern part of the US, stopping to eat so that they can replenish the energy that they need to continue their long migration.

It is possible that there was 2 different birds and that one was a Pacific golden plover, however since we were not able to confirm the fact, there were no other reports, I don't think that anyone checked it off of their Minnesota life list.

Purgatory Creek Shore Birds

This summer when gas prices got high I decided to try and do more of my birding closer to home. There were a few good spots in the Twin Cities that I visited regularly, Carpenter Nature Center, Mn Valley NWR, Dodge Nature Center and Wood Lake Nature Center, but in the past I also did a lot of traveling to places like Crex Meadows,Carlos Avery, Necedah NWR, Hok Si La, Park Point, Hawk Ridge, and Sax Zim Bog. This year since I was limiting my trips to those further locations I needed to find some new spots in the Twin Cities that I could visit to give me some more variety. Near the end of July I found a new spot that fit the bill. Purgatory Creek Park is a wetland area surrounding Purgatory Creek in Eden Prairie, MN. It is in the South west part of the Twin Cities, and I live on the South East, so it is not as close as many of the parks that I frequent in the Twin Cities but it is still only 20 to 30 minutes away, depending on traffic. They have a good system of trails, including one that runs between two wetland areas, and a viewing area. I heard about it on the MOU list server because it had some of the best mud flats around back at the end of July.
So I headed off to Eden Prairie after work to explore the park and check out the mud flats for any possible shore birds. I was not disappointed. There were a lot of things for me to photograph. They even had a small mud flat with a few shorebirds like this killdeer.
Besides for the killdeer I also spotted a solitary sandpiper. You can tell that it is a solitary, as I learned later in August at the shorebird workshop which I attended, because of the white eye ring and the dark shoulder.
Solitary sandpiper often found alone, thus the name. They are unlike most other shorebirds in that they do not mind having vegetation around, so they are often found wandering small ponds.
The lesser yellowlegs, on the other hand, will usually avoid mud that is filled with greenery. They use their long legs to wade through the water looking for aquatic insects, and small fish to eat.
It is difficult to tell the difference between the lesser and greater yellowlegs. A lot of people look for a difference in size to tell them apart but this can be difficult when you have only one bird. In our shorebird class we were told to examine the beak of the bird, if it is two toned then it is a greater yellowlegs but if it is a single color, as this bird demonstrates, then it is a lesser yellowlegs.

First 2008 Trip to Crex Meadows

The nice weather continued on Sunday so Michelle and I made our first trek of the year up to Crex Meadows. Unfortunately most of the ducks had already moved on to the north but there was still plenty of things for us to photograph.
Yellow-rumped warblers are all over the place right now. I see them at every park that I visit and Crex was no exception.
Although not as common as the yellow-butts I have spotted quite a few eastern phoebes.
Michelle spotted this northern flicker and was quite proud of her self for identifying it.
There were a few shorebirds around, mostly greater yellowlegs. In August I am registered for a shorebird workshop out in South Dakota. I should have a good opportunity to get some nice shorebird pics then.
We did see a few ducks that were still around. Most of them were blue-winged teal but we did also spot a single northern shoveler.

The trumpeter swans have begun to build there nests. When we visit again in late June they will probably have some cygnets for us to photograph.
Most of the osprey platforms were occupied with nests. One of the nests had been taken over by eagles but the others were acting as home for osprey pairs. Unfortunately most of the platforms are pretty far out and don't have a very good view. One of the platforms on the north east side of Crex had a little better view from the road. As we stopped to check out the osprey this bird took off from the platform and came over to check us out. That allowed me to get a couple of closer pics as he flew over head.

A trip to Necedah NWR instead of Cape May

I had thought about going to the Cape May Autumn Convention this weekend but I decided against it. First off this would prolly be the last nice weekend at home and I was not sure I wanted to give that up and spend half my time flying and driving and in lectures at a convention. Second is the whole feral cat issue, Laura Erickson had a great post about the issue, which made it some what of a moral dilemma. So I decided that I would take some field trips around home instead. As it turns out it was a good call because, from what I have read, the weather at Cape May for most of the weekend was pretty bad, meanwhile here at home we had a gorgeous fall weekend.

Since the weather forecast for the weekend was looking so good I talked Michelle into going on a road trip to Necedah NWR in Wisconsin on Saturday. Necedah is popular for birders and naturalists particularly for the whooping crane project and the endangered karner blue butterfly. I had wanted to visit Necedah earlier in the year, when the karner blues were around, however with everything else I did this year I did not get a chance. I figured that the karners would be gone at this time of the year but I was still hoping to see a whooper. We saw whoopers down in Aransas NWR in Texas a couple of years ago but they were very far away and it was impossible to get even a mediocre photo. The Necedah website lists weekly numbers of waterfowl and cranes and the previous week they had listed 31 whoopers in the park so even though it would be a long shot I knew that it might be possible.

I let Michelle sleep in, the least that I could do since I was dragging her around the country side again, so we arrived at Necedah at around 11:00 am. This was our first visit to Necedah so we were not sure where the best place would be to spot wildlife so we just picked a road and began to drive. The road took us through a wooded area with a lot of dead and downed trees. It was not long before we spotted an immature red-headed woodpecker.
Juvenile red-heads have gray heads and black bars on white secondaries. As they progress from juvenile to immature status you can begin to see some red on the head.
Red-headed woodpeckers live in the eastern half of the US and south eastern Canada. They migrate from the northern parts of their range and spend the winter typically in Texas. When we visited we saw that there were still quite a few red-heads, both immature and adults, that had not left yet.

There were also quite a few adult red-headed woodpeckers. Red-heads are the most omnivorous of the woodpeckers. They will burrow into trees to get bugs or catch them in the air or on the ground. They will also eat seeds, berries, nuts, fruit, bird eggs, hatchlings or mice.Red heads are one of the few woodpeckers that are known to store food and the only type that will sometimes cover it up with bark. They hide seeds and nuts in cracks in wood, as shown above, and will even store live grasshoppers by wedging them into a tight crevice where they can't escape.Recent data shows that the numbers of red-heads is declining. This is most likely due to habitat loss and people clearing out dead trees. Red-heads need these dead trees for nesting so it is important that we leave some areas in their natural states. Necedah NWR had plenty of dead trees so it was perfect habitat for red-heads. After a while the ecosystem transitioned from old and dying deciduous woodlands to prairie. There was a short hiking trail so I decided to stop and get a bit of exercise. The trail was supposed to go through some wetlands and there was even a short boardwalk but things were pretty dry so there was very little water in sight and not many birds either. I did spot a white-throated sparrow in the brush.I got back to the car and we continued north. We kept looking for the pools and lakes that, according to the last weeks numbers on the website, held thousands of ducks, but all we found were hunters getting ready for the season. Finally we came to two large pools. We did see some ducks, geese, and swans but most where on the opposite side of the pools, which was to far away to get any pics. There was, however, a lesser yellowlegs on the shore on one side of the road that was not too far away.On the other side of the road a lone great blue heron caught himself some lunch. After the pools we continued to the trail where you can see the karner blue butterflies during the summer. They are found in this habitat because of the wild lupine that grows there is the only known food for their caterpillar state. Even though I did not think that there would be any karners left I decided to walk the trail anyway, after all I did see a monarch and a sulfur flying around.

I did not find any karners, all of the lupine was already dead, but I did find a ruby meadowhawk.On the way out of the park we spotted a red-tailed hawk.He decided that he did not like the look of our car, not sure what problem he had with Honda, so he took off and began to circle higher on the thermals. We never did get to see a whooper but I am definitely planning to go back next summer, prolly in early June. Hopefully on that trip I will get some shots of the Karner butterflies and maybe some pictures of juvenile red-headed woodpeckers.

More pictures from Crex Meadows

Here are some of the rest of the birds that I photographed at Crex Meadows last week.

There are still quite a few pied-billed grebes hanging around.

Most of them were either on Phantom Lake or in the North Fork Flowage.A lot of american coots have migrated into the area.I saw two flocks of around 50 or more coots. One flock was in the shallow waters on the north of phantom lake.The second group was near the boat landing on the east side of the North Fork Flowage.I spotted a few greater yellowlegs in the Upper North Fork Flowage.There were also some greater yellowlegs near dike 4.Sandhill cranes are all over, with the biggest concentrations in the fields southwest of Reisinger Lake.On my way out I was driving south on County Road F, which is the west boundary of Crex and I spotted a male wood duck, back in breeding plumage, in the L Dikes mixed in with canadian geese.