I had been green with envy since some of you got snow! Here in Hixson, we finally got a small dusting on our deck at dusk. I went back up to Hiwassee Refuge this morning. At 12:15 Eastern, from the gazebo, I saw the female Whooping Crane that has been present since November. She was in the middle of the bush hogged corn field toward the rangers residence. By 2 PM, with near frozen fingers and toes, I had given up on seeing the two juveniles that were present last Sunday afternoon. On the way out, I turned right onto Blythe Ferry Lane. A quarter mile down the road, where all the good sparrows were seen in previous years, I happened to glance right and was able to again pick up the same female I had seen earlier from inside the refuge. As mentioned earlier, on the right side of the road, there is a silo in the middle of another corn patch and she and about a thousand or more Sandhill Cranes were foraging for the last remaining corn kernels. It's sad to think, these guy's will all be gone in a couple weeks :( When I got back home, all my feeders are empty. Wonder what I missed? It sure wasn't the diet rootbeer!!!! I got tanked up on fish and chips and A&W. Jimmy Wilkerson Hixson/Chattanooga, TN. =================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 _____________________________________________________________