Sept. 25, 2004 Ensley Bottoms Shelby Co. TN Today was an almost perfect day to view the ton of "Wind Birds" at Ensley. Cloudy skies, cool temps and birds everywhere. Today, I totaled a fantastic, 18 species during a 4 hour stint this morning and another 3 hours this afternoon with a trip to President's Island and the Mississippi River in between. Sitting down and slowly going through the thousands of Least Sandpipers produced a few single birds that pushed the total up. Almost the first bird I saw after I arrived was a neat Buff-breasted Sandpiper that had black leggings on and pranced around like a dancer at practice. A single Solitary still hangs out on its special log and one Baird's Sandpiper pick fed in one area all day. An adult winter plumaged Ruddy Turnstone, a heavily molted White-rumped Sandpiper, a molting juvenile Red-necked Phalarope that slept all morning, a lone Wilson's Snipe, sure made for a great day of Wind Birds. In the morning I had only one immature Black-necked Stilt but in the afternoon a family of 3 showed up along with 2 Greater Yellowlegs on TVA Lake. Two immature Short-billed Dowitchers fed and slept away the day in one spot and there were only 3 Semipalmated Plovers in the mix. There were over a hundred Stilt Sandpipers and almost 200 Lesser Yellowlegs with Pectoral Sandpipers numbers in between. Western Sandpipers still out number the Semipalmated Sandpipers but their numbers are up from last week. Looking through all these birds as always produced a few in odd enough shapes, sizes and coloration to keep you busy scratching your head and always learning.............Love it when it is like this. A Merlin and a few Broad-wings kept the birds looking up all morning but an immature tundrius Peregrine got everyone in the air and kept them there for a long time as the immature bird missed time and time again. The resident kestrels and the Osprey added to the Red-shouldered and Red-tailed Hawks made for a pretty nice raptor day. Good Birding!!! Jeff R. Wilson OL'COOT / TLBA Bartlett, TN =================NOTES TO SUBSCRIBER===================== The TN-Bird Net requires you to sign your messages with first and last name, city (town) and state abbreviation. ----------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- To post to this mailing list, simply send email to: tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ----------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send email to: tn-bird-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * TN-Bird Net is owned by the Tennessee Ornithological Society Neither the society(TOS) nor its moderator(s) endorse the views or opinions expressed by the members of this discussion group. Moderator: Wallace Coffey, Bristol, TN wallace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Visit the Tennessee Ornithological Society web site at http://www.tnbirds.org * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Topographical Maps located at http://topozone.com/find.asp * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ========================================================