Dec. 11, 2005 Mississippi River and Ensley Bottoms Shelby Co. TN Tunica Co. MS An early morning trip to the river front, revealed a couple of hundred Ring-billed Gulls and a single Red-breasted Merganser. At TVA Lake in Ensley, I scanned for over an hour but found only the regular cast of thousands moving in and out of McKellar Lake. There were good numbers of Canvasback, Redhead and Greater Scaup in the surprising 15 species mix along with a Red-breasted Merganser, Green-winged Teal and single hen Pintail and Wigeon. The four Goldeneye were missing but birds were coming and going like Grand Central Station on a Friday before a long weekend. At Robco Lake, the numbers were slightly down with birds in groups of a thousand or more taking off and returning from Horn Lake. I did not find the White-winged Scoter but you probably need to set up for a long stay to see everything using the lake. There were 174 White Pelican that were later joined by 21 more that flew in from Coro Lake across the road. Three Horned Grebe were seen along with hundreds of Ring-billed Gulls, 3 Bonaparte's and a hundred plus DC Cormorants. Tunica Co. Mississippi still takes the cake when it comes to numbers, even without rain. Geese were found mainly in the north and south parts of the county but at sundown the skies filled with birds coming and going. I only found 7 Sandhill Cranes (3 and 4 at 2 locations) and came back trying to track 3 of them to roost just to gauge how many are in the area but was distracted by a sleepy coyote and a Great Horned owl which I stopped to photograph. I think the Sandhills were going to roost in approximately the same area as previous years. Shorebird wise, I found hundreds of Wilson's snipe, a scattering of Dunlin and a couple of Lesser Yellowlegs but no Least Sandpipers, Killdeer are in every field. At Arkabutla Lake, Q. B. Gray and I scanned the thousands of Bonaparte's and Ring-billed but came up with nothing else BUT the only 2 Herring Gulls I saw ALL weekend. Huge snow drifted banks of White Pelicans can be seen resting on the lake and I saw one group of 21 in the Delta circling high. The big kick were the flocks in the thousands of Lapland Longspurs found at 4 locations. There has got to be some goodies in those flocks, still looking for my second McCown's or Chestnut -collareds down there or my 3rd Snow Bunting. The area also produced 3 different groups of Western Meadowlarks. Kenny and Ladonna Nichols with Dick Baxter just found a McCown's in a flock near Jonesboro, AR just last week. It just takes time to look at them all ;o) Good Birding !!! Jeff R. Wilson / TLBA 6298 Memphis-Arlington Road Bartlett, TN 38135 =================NOTES TO SUBSCRIBER===================== The TN-Bird Net requires you to sign your messages with first and last name, city (town) and state abbreviation. You are also required to list the count in which the birds you report were seen. The actual date of observation should appear in the first paragraph. _____________________________________________________________ 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 _____________________________________________________________