Friday, June 7

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Busy, busy week but we got some birding in.

Tuesday we tried a spot along the Grand River. No new bird species but the cottonwood seeds made the place look like it was snowing.

Cottonwood snow on the River Trail.

Cottonwood on a pond.

Snowing cottonwood on the Grand River.

Wednesday morning we hit a local park before work. Lise got her yellow-billed cuckoo and we both got willow flycatcher and finally got a scarlet tanager.

Then we thought we would try Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge in the evening. Conveniently, a report of a black-necked stilt at the refuge came over the listserve in the afternoon. We headed up there and cruised around looking for it. The wildlife drive is a one way six mile loop on a slow single lane gravel road at the top of a berm. If you miss something it is no small feat to get back around to the spot again.  We found some guy diligently looking at what seemed to be the described spot. We started looking too but didn’t find anything. Lise was using the scope so I drifted back along the road to look for other things. After about 15 minutes the other guy packed up and left. As he was pulling away Lise yelled and waved for me. I ran back to her, waving in case the other guy looked back. His back up lights came on and he came tearing about 50 yards in reverse back to us. He hopped out saying, “I was driving forward but looking backwards and saw you running. When old guys like us start running is has to be something good.” Anyway, we all got good looks at the stilt. The other guy was quite happy since it was his Father’s Day present to be able to go chasing it. He was quite appreciative of Lise’s spotting skills.

We got a couple other good birds at the refuge too. Lise heard an American bittern and we both got wood thrush, cliff swallow, and night hawks. I’m now at 191 species and Lise is at 186.

I also saw my first eastern pondhawk dragonfly for the year. Which was surprising considering how cold and windy it was.

Cold and windy June evening at Shiawassee.

Then today a big year disaster struck. The spreadsheet I was tracking our totals in somehow got corrupted. It has us both at 129 species. Luckily I have all the species listed in the blog. I just need to backtrack and figure out where things went bad. Grunt work but it can be recovered.