Monday, September 1

Labor Day. A celebration of American workers and laborers. Unless you happen to work in a big box store in which case you work on the holiday and often work extra hours. Except for the dreaded Black Friday, Labor Day is one of the biggest consumer sale days of the year. Anita said her department sales at Walmart were up 34% yesterday and today was so busy she couldn’t move through her department.

We took advantage of the holiday weekend to get in some birding. Yesterday was the last day Pte Mouillee State Game Area was open to the general public until after hunting season. So we popped on down there with Barb and Ellen. Maybe popped isn’t the best descriptor. I’m not sure a two-hour drive down there, plus a two-hour drive back, plus seven hours of sun-blasted birding, constitutes just popping down there.

Pte Mouille is mostly diked wetlands on the Lake Erie coast. Nice vistas and zero shade. We ride our bikes around the dikes and I haul camera gear and spotting scopes in a trailer behind my bicycle. So we get a workout in addition to birding. It was great. We probably would have stayed until dark had Ellen not kept pointing out the squall line heading our way. All told it was a productive day and we beat the rain by a good 15 minutes. I added 15 species and Lise added 13. That brings our yearly counts to 217 species for me and 215 for Lise. Migration is picking up so there is still chance to add some species we missed earlier in the year.