[TN-Bird] Mississippi River/Memphis

From: OLCOOT1@xxxxxxx
To: tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 07:29:06 EST
Nov. 26, 2002
Memphis, Shelby Co. TN

I had an hour to spare Tuesday morning and spent it looking over the 
Mississippi River at Mud Island. Watching at the graphs of the Mississippi's 
gyrations for the past few months is like looking at a herd of passing 
dromedaries. The last bounce took the river up 13 feet in as many days and it 
has now dropped about half that and should drop for another week or so. At 
this time there are few sandbars showing in the back waters but that did not 
stop the birds.

There was what looked like a snow bank on one tiny sandbar. It was found to 
be made up of 184 White Pelicans that were counted as they decided to wake up 
and slowly leave to feed in an eddy behind one of the rock dikes. Scattered 
around this and other emerging sandbars were 120+ Ring-billed Gulls, 21 
Herring and 5 Bonaparte's. This number varied as feeding birds returned from 
outings and resting birds returned to feeding.

Out in the river floated, 4 Horned Grebes, 21 Lesser Scaup, 4 Bufflehead, 3 
Ruddy, 2 Red-breasted Mergansers and the token pod of coots. About 60 DC 
Cormorants were feeding and resting on the dikes, some with wings spread wide 
to dry for there was no sun to aid in warming up. Then came the parade, 
either from some roost area behind Loosahatchie Bar or points farther north, 
strings of cormorants started to arrived. When things slowed down I tallied 
up 3145 cormorants had arrived and were feeding in the waters behind one of 
the dikes.

A pretty good show, down on the banks of the Mississippi River at 
Memphis.........

Good Birding!!!

Jeff R. Wilson
OL' COOT / TLBA
Bartlett Tenn.


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[TN-Bird] Mississippi River/Memphis

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