October 2, 2004 Ensley Bottoms, TVA Lake Mississippi River Shelby Co. TN An early morning visit to Mud Island revealed a steady wind and only a single Horned Grebe riding the high, fast flowing current south. With no sandbars in sight the picken's are slim but the river has started another fall after a 17 foot rise, I just need a few feet of sand for the birds to rest on. At TVA Lake the scene was just as bare on the first visit but the pits provided a lot of Wind Birds to pick through. The wind was relentless out of the north, 190 degrees from the previous afternoon. There did appear to be a few more birds present with a couple of species new or others more numerous. Nice views of the immature female Wilson's Phalarope, immature Semipalmated Plovers, Western and Semi-sands plus two Wilson's Snipe were had. There was one interesting peep that just stayed too far out to reveal its true identity but that is what keeps you coming back. A small bird flitted into the grass and we flushed it out into the open and saw a nice dark Savannah Sparrow my first for the season but I thought I had flushed one off the road last week. The shorebirds were nervous and flushed time and time again for no apparent reason but they knew for better than I what was in the air. Kestrels were everywhere and a Cooper's was escorted out of the area by a ball of trailing Starlings. Three Pintails and a Blue-winged Teal flushed ahead of us off one of the ditches, Pintails RULE........... I tried Mud Island again at lunch and found the north wind had started to produce, as a large dark mass of ducks in an eddy turned into 354 plus Shoveler, 5 Pintail and a Pied-billed Grebe. The wind was still too much for anything more than ducks to be flying so I returned to Ensley. Ensley again produced, at TVA in the mix were Wigeon, Pintail, Gadwall, Shoveler, Wood Ducks and Mallard plus 4 Long-billed Dowitchers in basic plumage. In the first pit there was an immature Black-bellied Plover and farther back were 9 more Long-billed Dowitchers sleeping in a gray mound. The numbers of shorebirds is still impressive and I think there will be more Sunday. On top of that the shorebirds kept pointing out high flying raptors and I ended up with 8 Broad-winged, 2 Red-shouldered, Kestrels, a Merlin and a kettle of 9 Black Vultures all sailing south under the watchful eyes of my keen spotters. Bring it on October............. 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 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ========================================================