Spent the afternoon canoeing at Rankin Bottoms in intermittent rain - camera had the day off. It was actually pretty nice between showers with close looks at a good variety of shorebirds. The most excitement was a dark tern flying directly at me; then it went past and some (but not all) of the excitement faded - Black Tern. The main differences from Mike Sledjeski's report yesterday are addition of Ruddy Turnstone and Dunlin, and I did not locate the White-rumped Sandpiper or any Buff-breasted Sandpipers. --- On Mon, 9/5/11, do-not-reply@xxxxxxxxx <do-not-reply@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: From: do-not-reply@xxxxxxxxx <do-not-reply@xxxxxxxxx> Subject: eBird Report - Rankin Bottoms, Sep 5, 2011 To: dkirschke@xxxxxxxxx Date: Monday, September 5, 2011, 9:43 PM Rankin Bottoms, Cocke, US-TN Sep 5, 2011 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM Protocol: Traveling 3.0 mile(s) Comments: On-off rain from TS Lee 34 species (+1 other taxa) Canada Goose 20 Wood Duck 4 Mallard 30 Blue-winged Teal 2 Northern Shoveler 1 Double-crested Cormorant 20 Great Blue Heron 14 Great Egret 20 Little Blue Heron 1 Green Heron 3 Osprey 2 American Golden-Plover 2 Semipalmated Plover 12 Killdeer 20 Spotted Sandpiper 3 Solitary Sandpiper 1 Greater Yellowlegs 1 Willet 1 Lesser Yellowlegs 8 Ruddy Turnstone 1 Sanderling 1 Semipalmated Sandpiper 10 Least Sandpiper 40 Baird's Sandpiper 1 Pectoral Sandpiper 20 Dunlin 1 Stilt Sandpiper 10 Short-billed Dowitcher 2 Short-billed/Long-billed Dowitcher 1 Laughing Gull 1 Ring-billed Gull 30 Lesser Black-backed Gull 1 Black Tern 1 Tree Swallow 20 Barn Swallow 5 This report was generated automatically by eBird v2 (http://ebird.org) David Kirschke Johnson City, TN