Thanks to Mike Todd's posts, we decided it was time to see the lifer Western Grebe and complete our sightings of the USA grebes. Wednesday we went through the Duck River Unit on our way to Paris and were disappointed at the small numbers of ducks seeable from the main refuge road. Best birds there were a single Ruddy Turnstone, 6 beautiful Wilson's Snipes, and the huge flock of Rusty Blackbirds in a residential yard near the refuge. We arrived at Britton Ford about 2 p.m. and although duck numbers were not large we had a good variety - Mallard, Gadwall, Scaup, American Wigeon, Green-winged Teal, Northern Shoveler, Bufflehead, one male Pintail, one immature male Wood, and one possible Mottled. Lots of Horned Grebes and a few Common Loons were also present. Northern Harriers put on quite a show in the nearby fields with one female teaching a juvenile how to hunt holding our attention the longest. Just before dark we were pretty sure both a Western and Red-necked Grebe came in but the light was too poor to get a confirmation look at the bill on either of them. Our frustration at not being able to get a positive identification was calmed by the repeated call of a Common Loon. A Wood Thrush song may be the clearest and sweetest of all but something in the Common Loon call is real soul music. Today we went directly to Pace Point, stopping only at the old pumping station to search for the LeConte's Sparrow but found instead only several hundred seeds that wanted to leave home and promptly stuck to our pants and needed a lot of time and effort to remove. At the first area to view the water on Pace Point both the Western and Red-necked Grebe were easy to find as they were near the shore in a huge raft of Scaup and Ruddy Ducks. But the strong winds apparently had caused most of the birds to leave or relocate to calmer waters as there were few birds viewable from the east side of the point. Rocky Point had just a couple of Common Loons and a few Scaup and Ruddies, so we went back to Pace again and this time were really elated to find two Western Grebes side-by-side in one scope view! Birding is so strange sometimes. In our trip to Washington State in the fall of 2001 we found our lifer Clark's Grebe and had a couple of possible Westerns but could never get the kind of look adequate for counting a lifer. Now here we were seeing two Western Grebes up close in Tennessee! Thanks, Mike, for the assist. Duck numbers increased at Pace as we ate lunch and watched but never numbered more than a few hundred, mostly Scaup, Ruddy, Mallard, Gadwall, with about a dozen American Wigeon and 6 Common Goldeneyes. Two stately Bald Eagles flying at low altitude sent the huge raft of American Coots and the dozens of Horned Grebes diving and swimming frantically. On the return trip the bay east of the old pumping station was filled with thousands of ducks but we found nothing new in several scope scans. Tommy & Virginia Curtis Smithville, TN DeKalb County =================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 _____________________________________________________________