[TN-Bird] Shorebird Study Weekend

July 22-23-24, 2005
Ensley Bottoms
Shelby Co, TN
 
Friday afternoon, Saturday and then Sunday morning were spent in the heat  
looking at hot shorebirds. I had John Laux from UTK and Barry Hart down for a  
little mini course on shorebirds. John will be surveying and studying food and  
habitat usage on the upper TN River and Barry, with TVA, will be 
participating  in the locating of habitat and monitoring shorebird usage of 
these  flats 
through out the TN River Valley. We spent the middle  of the day Saturday, 
inside going through about 300 slides of the 40 plus  species that pass through 
TN, studying the various ages and plumage's these Wind  Birds present to us 
here 
in the mid-south.
 
Unfortunately the drought rules here and we only had 11 species but  
thousands of birds to look through, giving us an opportunity to explore the  
vast 
variety of plumage progressions, plus general structure and subtle  differences 
in 
bills, legs, color and habits.
 
The Sanderling still strolls the flats, the 4 Black-necked Stilt young that  
hatched last Sunday, are all together and doing well. The Pectoral and  
Semipalmated Sandpiper numbers continue to grow along with Solitary  and 
Spotted 
Sandpipers but we were down to just a few Western Sandpipers,  Lesser 
Yellowlegs 
and a token flyby Stilt Sandpiper. The Least Sandpipers are  counted in great 
numbers in every corner you search. The Willet evidently has  left for points 
to the south. The late evening flights out of a  staging area to night 
roosting sites as always was a wondrous  and impressive show to watch.
 
Unfortunately, an immature Yellow-crowned Night-Heron had dunked itself in  
the sludge and is stranded on an island; the scenario does not bode well for 
its  survival. Two bucks with heavy antlers in velvet looked back at us in the  
morning light before bolting into the woods and a young coyote sat and  
curiously watched us as we watched him for a little fur to go along with our  
feathers.
 
Sunday afternoon, I visited Eagle Lake and the only thing of note was the  
continuing numbers of Mississippi Kites. I counted 44 with one sweep of the  
glasses. The Mississippi River has been falling 2 foot a day and sandbars are  
again surfacing like huge submarines or beached whales still moist from their  
latest dunking.
 
There seems to be a lot of Wind Bird species just to our north and the next  
front's passage should fill out the blanks on my shorebird season field  card.
 
 
Good  Birding!!!

Jeff R. Wilson
OL'COOT / TLBA
Bartlett,  TN

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