I took a short trip over to the Busseltown unit of Tennessee NWR in Decatur County today (Nov. 8 2006). All the refuge roads were open but water birds were a bust -- no geese at all, only ducks were 80 Mallards, just a few Great Blue Herons and Ring-billed Gulls plus one Herring Gull. Maybe it's early yet for the geese there. So I focused on sparrows and other dickey birds instead. And there were plenty of sparrows: Field Sparrow 10 Savannah Sparrow 12 LeConte's Sparrow 1 Song Sparrow 90 Swamp Sparrow 70 White-throated Sparrow 55 White-crowned Sparrow 18 Interestingly, no Lincoln's Sparrow in spite of much stomping through suitable habitat. Also 60 American Pipits and 50 meadowlarks. I put all the meadowlarks down as Easterns since that was all the vocalizations I heard; how far west in TN do you have to go before Western's become a likelihood? I found the LeConte's thanks to the pointers Damien Simbek and Jeff Wilson gave me on the preferred habitat. I located a nice patch of panicum around a slough amidst the corn fields, walked it, and within about 10 minutes a LeConte's flushed, perched in perfect light, and sat there giving me gorgeous views. The perfect way to get my state tickie for LeConte's (I decided that since I'll probably live here for most of the rest of my life, I ought to start paying attention to my Tennessee list!). I was wondering about the LeConte's - Panicum association. Is the panicum a direct food resource, or is it more that it provides the proper physical structure for LeConte's? The Panicum seedheads seemed to be picked pretty clean already. Bill Pulliam Hohenwald TN =================NOTES TO SUBSCRIBER===================== The TN-Bird Net requires you to SIGN YOUR MESSAGE with first and last name, CITY (TOWN) and state abbreviation. You are also required to list the COUNTY 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 ------------------------------ Assistant Moderator Andy Jones Cleveland, OH ------------------------------- Assistant Moderator Dave Worley Rosedale, VA __________________________________________________________ Visit the Tennessee Ornithological Society web site at http://www.tnbirds.org * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ARCHIVES TN-Bird Net Archives at //www.freelists.org/archives/tn-bird/ EXCELLENT MAP RESOURCES Topographical Maps located at http://topozone.com/find.asp Tenn.Counties Map at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/states/tennessee3.gif Aerial photos to complement google maps http://local.live.com _____________________________________________________________