200!

Wednesday, July 2, I went for a canoe trip on the St. Croix River with Paul and our new summer naturalist Jen. While we were there to make sure Jen was familiar with that part of the river, I also had my eye out for a lifer bird. I've been hovering at 199 birds for quite a while now. I thought I might spot a prothonotary warbler or a cerulean warbler or the like. A bank swallow would have even done the trick. We had almost finished with our short paddle and hadn't seen many birds. Just was we came up on the landing for Franconia I spotted a small sandpiper on the shore. It was a spotted sandpiper! Excellent. I didn't have one on my list yet.

I'm pretty sure I had seen one before. I saw what I thought was one while tubing down the Crow river on the fourth of July weekend years ago but at the time I wasn't totally sure about the ID so I let it pass. This one was for sure. It had the spotted breast and was doing the little bobbing up and down thing.

200 birds has been fun and pretty easy without really trying to hard. Seeing 300 is going to actually take some looking! I think I need to go on vacation though so I can rack up some numbers faster. Seeing another 100 birds in Minnesota would be difficult.

Here's some target birds though that I have not seen in Minnesota that shouldn't be too hard. This list would take me about half way to 300.

Grey Jay Eared Grebe American Bittern American Black duck Green-winged Teal Snow Goose Tundra Swan Northern Goshawk Ruffed Grouse Black Tern Forster's Tern Herring Gull Lesser Yellowlegs Yellow Billed Cukoo Eastern Screech Owl Long Eared Owl

Short Eared Owl Northern Saw-whet Owl Snowy Owl Great Grey Owl Northern Hawk Owl Whip-poor-will Black-backed woodpecker Three-toed woodpecker Boreal Chickadee Alder Flycatcher Willow Flycatcher Philadelphia Vireo Purple Martin Marsh Wren Sedge Wren Gray-cheeked Thrush

Veery American Pipit Brown Thrasher Bohemian Waxwing Bay-brested Warbler Black-throated Blue Warbler Cerulean Warbler Prothonotary Warbler Pine Warbler Dickcissel Brewer's blackbird Orchard Oriole Rusty blackbird Evening Grosbeak Red Crossbill

Well, time will tell which of those I will see this year. Out of the 200 lifers so far I really liked the tufted puffin I saw from the very edge of the olympic pennisula as well as the American Dipper taking a bath in glacial runoff on Mt. Rainier. I have print photos of both of those and I'll get around to posting them some day. It was only two years ago after all. The birds in Norway were cool too like the Great Spotted Woodpecker on top of the Stavkirke or the Pied Wagtail. My first woodcock was memorable and there were many more. I could spend all night thinking and writing about the adventures with these birds. That's part of what makes it fun!