Oct. 31, 2004 TN/MS This morning the skies opened up and dropped a ton of rain. It had slacked off just enough, when I arrived at Mud Island in Downtown Memphis, for me to see the small sandbar that the dropping river had exposed Saturday. I could see that the bar was covered completely with some sort of birds, probably ducks I thought. After a look in the scope, I realized they were gulls and with the exception of a couple of immature Herring and 7 Ring-billed the rest appeared to be Franklin's. As the lighting got better and clear skies peeked through, I could start to count as best I could. Over and over I came up with around 250 Franklin's and a little after 9 AM another 124 dropped in and crowded onto the small bar. I kept seeing some taller birds with long necks in one area of the mix, These turned out to be 8 Avocets that were preening and stretching their wings. Later, I found 4 Franklin's on McKellar Lake and a quick trip to Arkabutla Lake in the afternoon, just a little souith of Memphis, produced 3 groups numbering over 450 birds. There were only 8 American White Pelicans out from Memphis on the Mississippi but 2000+ are using Arkabutla. There were huge flocks of ducks spread across Arkabutla and I counted over 55 Forster's Terns where we had the Little Gull a couple of weeks ago. 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 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ========================================================