Friday, November 21, 2008

WI river bottom

Today, I puttered around near Spring Green in the WI river bottoms.  I quickly bagged a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker at the Cemetery on County JJ. I thought that was going to be the best bird of the day until a stop at Arena boat landing saw my FOS Snow Buntings.   Then, I got lucky. As I cruised down Helena Rd, heading back towards the river, I came to the Kraemer Inc quarry.  A quick look at the water proved that there were no ducks around but as I turned to leave, I spotted my FOS. N SHRIKE perched at the top of a small pine overlooking an open field.  

After I crossed the river, I checked out the pine stands around Bakken's Pond. No finches, but I did bag a Great Blue Heron and 8 Bald Eagles.  

Otherwise, it was pretty quiet and pretty cold.  I think the high today just barely topped 22 degrees with a windchill of around 10. 

Tomorrow, hopefully I'll have some photos and a post about a special bird. 

Oh yea, today's Blog of the Day is:
It's run by Amy Hooper from Orange County CA. She's the editor of Wild Bird magazine. 

2 comments:

Andrea said...

Wow! 8 Bald Eagles. That's pretty good! Over here, I've only seen 3 this entire year. Their populations seem to be declining in my local area; I remember just a few years ago I could see them almost every day.

Chris W said...

That's interesting. We have no shortage of them here.

In the winter time, on the Mississppi (or even Wisconsin) river, it's not unusual to stand in one spot and count 100+ Bald Eagles just by turning in a circle.
I think the DNR count last winter just for Pools 8 and 7 was well into the thousands.

So if you want some Eagles, let me know and I'll ship some to you. ;)