Dec. 5-6, 2004 West TN Mike and I had a good run Saturday with some nice birds, the leucistic Horned Lark was the second I had ever seen and Mike's first and after looking all day for an interesting Red-tailed Hawk we found only the one in Tiptonville. There were Red-tails and Red-shouldered every where we went with very high numbers of Harriers and Kestrel. As he said the numbers and the species count on waterfowl was down but still 17 species is not too shabby. The next morning near Bogota in Dyer Co, I came across a concentration of "calurus" Red-tails with 4 in view at one time. One light morph and 3 dark with two looking like identical twins sitting on consecutive light poles. Not too far away I had a dark Harlan's. I got a few photos showing the wing extensions and other plumage characteristic of the western red-tails. I also had an immature Krider's in Dyer Co. and an adult Krider's in Lauderdale Co. I found only a few more fields with small flocks of Lapland Longspurs. I really think the re-sprouted fields are going to make for slim pickings because it lessens the food supply in these fields. I ended up in the afternoon at the "Pits" in Ensley. It was raining pretty steadily and the ducks were stacked up in TVA Lake but I saw nothing unusual in the mix. A lot of Ring-billed and Bonaparte's Gulls were grouped up on the ash flows with a single Forster's tern which I took a photo of because it looked so miserable in the rain. The Snowy Egret with the injured wing looked pretty forlorn as all the Great Egrets have left. I had lower numbers of shorebirds with a few Western Sandpipers and Dunlin but no Sanderling. I also saw my first Canada Geese for the weekend and there were Pipits and Horned Larks strewn about. Started out in fine weather and ended in Damp Fine Weather. 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 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ========================================================