Our team of Nolan Pope, Peter Gorman, John Romano and myself did Columbia County for the Madison Audubon Big Birding Day today. MAS largely follows the ABA Big Day rules, except with a modified 13-hour schedule (4:00 a.m. to 5 p.m. - the early ending time is to allow teams from the seven-county South Central Wisconsin area to make to Madison by 6:00 p.m. to turn in their results and attend the banquet at 7:00.) We started dark and early in the wind and rain at Mud Lake Wildlife Area. After picking up some common birds at Hagan and Hanson Rds., we moved over to Tollefson Rd. and finally heard a Sora (some of us heard a Virginia Rail at one of those locations - can't remember which.) After going to a couple of other nearby spots and hearing a WHIP-POOR-WILL and peenting Am. Woodcock (one of the latter nearly ended up in Peter Gorman's front grill,) then a fairly unproductive trip to Grassy Lake, we returned to Mud Lake for passerines. On our way in on Tollefson Rd., we saw a COMMON MOORHEN quite close to the road. We hit about our only flock of warblers of the day just a little ways in on a trail - had one very vocal CERULEAN WARBLER in with them. As we were driving back out, we stopped at the curve on Tollefson that overlooks the marsh to listen for bitterns, but instead had a calling KING RAIL (easily our best bird on the day.) Overall, with the "lovely" weather (nothing like scoping shorebirds in the driving sleet,) warblers and other passerines were fairly hard to come by. We did pick up some of our other "target" birds, such as EURASIAN COLLARED DOVE in Arlington and BOBOLINKS at Pine Island W.A., and we did pretty well with 8 species of raptors (including PEREGRINES at Pine Island and Goose Pond.) However, our anticipated shorebird bounty at Harvey/Wangsness was less than we had hoped, with many fewer species than we had seen there during scouting trips. Best birds there were single AM. GOLDEN and BLACK-BELLIED PLOVERS (the former in stunning breeding plumage.) Also had AMERICAN PIPITS (lots) and LAPLAND LONGSPURS there. At Schoeneberg Marsh, we ran into a couple of birders who said they'd heard there was a female Ruff (aka Reeve) at Schumacher Rd. in Dane Co. Since that was on our way to the post-count banquet, we all stopped there a little after 5:00 p.m. Most of the shorebirds were on the west side and the light was terrible, so we didn't make much of an effort. I'm not sure I'd recommend anyone coming any distance to look for it without some sort of corroboration. Peter Fissel barely awake in Madison, Dane Co. #################### You received this email because you are subscribed to the Wisconsin Birding Network (Wisbirdn). To UNSUBSCRIBE or SUBSCRIBE, use the Wisbirdn web interface at: //www.freelists.org/list/wisbirdn. To set DIGEST or VACATION modes, use the Wisbirdn web interface at: //www.freelists.org/list/wisbirdn. Visit Wisbirdn ARCHIVES at: //www.freelists.org/archives/wisbirdn.