Ordinarily, I don't care to go birding in hot, steamy weather, but there
were a couple of good eBird checklists submitted from here recently, so I
thought I would give it a try.
Normally, Lion's Den is crowded with visitors even during the week, but for
some reason, for the first hour, the sheriff, a maintenance man, and I were
the only people there.
The morning started extraordinarily well when as soon as I got out of my
car, a Connecticut Warbler popped up and perched out in the open and in the
sun for about 10 seconds. This was near the wood chip pile across from the
first small parking lot. It blew me away, because ordinarily this species is
a skulker and is difficult to see well. There were a lot of birds in this
area and I guess it just wanted to see what all the commotion was about. I
was able to see 11 species of warblers altogether which included a female
Black-throated Blue Warbler.
There were probably 30-40 birds that were too quick to hide and that I
wasn't able to identify. Probably many of these were warblers.
I can't decide whether to give bird-of-the day to Swainson's Thrush or Cedar
Waxwing. I stopped counting Swainson's Thrush at 20 but there were many,
many more, seemingly popping up around every bend. There were over 40 Cedar
Waxwings, many of them young of the year.
Flycatchers were numerous with 3 obvious Least Flycatchers, 1 Yellow-bellied
Flycatcher, and 5 other empids that were most likely Willow or Alder
Flycatchers. Eastern Wood-Pewees and Eastern Kingbird were also present.
Another nice surprise was a Yellow-billed Cuckoo near the stairs going down
to the lake.
Those are the highlights, but there were many other birds, and I only had a
few mosquito bites. I suspect they will increase since there are many
puddles around, and visitors should expect a few muddy patches on the
trails.
Thomas Wood, Menomonee Falls, Waukesha County
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