May 1-2, 2004 Ensley Bottoms Shelby Co. TN I spent 5 hours at the pits in the rain Saturday and 6 hours there in the sun today. There are more birds there today than Saturday when the storms started to put the birds down and the north wind stopped more today. I love to scan these immense spreads of Wind Birds and there was more than I could get around to today. My high counts on each species for the weekend totaled 5955 birds not counting the Killdeer which would put the figure at 6000. A total of 18 species were seen today with 16 found on Saturday. Nothing really exciting or exceptional other than 24 LB Dowitchers on Saturday building to 76 on Sunday. For spring that is an exceptional number of shorebirds at one location. Spring can be iffy and weather and food have a lot to do with what you find. The birds only build for a day or two before the weather sweeps them away again, unlike fall when they are in no hurry and numbers can build for a week or two. The only Am. Golden-Plovers seen were hurrying SOUTH. I watched 21 come over the Steam Plant and streak over the pits and the last I saw of them, they were over North Lake still going lickety-split. They must have had an encounter with a Peregrine and decided going north was not the best idea this year. Semipalmated Plovers were down to 35 little strutters today and the Black-necked Stilt number was a steady 24 all weekend. Greater Yellowlegs number was 9 on Saturday and down to 4 on Sunday while the 800 lesser Yellowlegs on Saturday grew to 1420. Still great numbers of Solitary Sandpipers with 241 counted on Sunday and only 5 Spotted Sandpipers could be found and all were within a 100 feet of each other. Semipalmated Sandpipers went from 10 or 12 on Saturday to 48 on Sunday but I think more dropped in about noon. Western Sandpipers were mostly all short-billed males and I could only pick out 4. Least Sandpipers numbers tripled from Sat to Sunday with a final count of 3540. Pectoral Sandpipers hit 475 on Sunday with 33 Stilt Sandpipers. White-rumped Numbers went from 2 to 17 and 1 Baird's tried to pass but could not get by TLBA. This afternoon I finally pulled out 2 real buffy-orange Short-billed Dowitchers in a pool all by themselves while the 76 Long-billed were spread out all over the back pool. Two Wilson's Snipe were flushed from one roadside ditch over in the AG area to complete the list. I expected at every turn to find a Wilson's Phalarope or a Dunlin but nada. Sunday afternoon, Eagle Lake was locked up but I did count 37 Mississippi Kites putting on a show over the open fields. At Ensley two Painted Buntings were seen but they were far enough apart not to be in competition and the Ensley Bald Eagle STILL SETS EGGS. 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 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ========================================================