Warblers and Woodlands? Shorebirds and Sandbars? Rails and Rice? A wide variety of birding choices this weekend. To the north of us people are reporting a big push of warblers riding the funnel into our area formed by the tropical storm to the East and the cold front coming from the West. A quick run-through at the pits after work, revealed that a good 1/3 to 1/2 of the birds there this weekend had left but still too many to scan in a short period so the stool and scope come out Saturday. The Mississippi, in just the last week, has dropped a quick 14 FEET! Even though the pools on the sandbars will not hold big numbers of shorebirds because of a lack of food, if a lot are traveling they will at least take advantage of these sandy shores and rest a minute or two and who knows, Sabine's are still in the picture. After the visit to the pits, I crossed over the bridge and spent 2 hours looking at Rice Fields. They have been cutting rice for a month now and I found field after field that had been harvested and only one where they were cutting. There were not any wet tires on the combines and of course no Rails. Harvest this year is again very early. The best concentrations of rails are found in very late September and early October. The dry fields will not help. Kenny Nichols called earlier today to see about the harvest over this way as the workers had been reporting rails in the fields over his way. We decided to pick through the shorebirds in our respective honey holes Saturday and then work toward each other Saturday afternoon until one of us finds a productive field. It will probably be a little early but who knows, Black, Yellow maybe? Well, there are a lot of options, so get out and find a good one but let us know;o) 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. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Topographical Maps located at http://topozone.com/find.asp * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Visit the Tennessee Ornithological Society web site at http://www.tnbirds.org * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * TN-Bird Net Owner: Wallace Coffey, Bristol, TN jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx (423) 764-3958 =========================================================