Soo report

[Francke]

Here is my report of what we saw in Chippewa County on 12-5/6/7-08.

On Friday, we headed to Whitefish Point in hopes of seeing birds at the feeders.  The feeders were nicely stocked with seed, however, only black-capped chickadees were seen in the time we were there.  The Whitefish Point Harbor had one adult glaucous gull among the many herring gulls.  One flock of cedar waxwings was seen along M-123 as we headed to Sault Ste. Marie for the night.

Saturday and Sunday in Soo area - started at the Edison Power plant where we had common mergs and common goldeneyes. We checked a number of feeders throughout the day including Dunbar and there were few birds coming to any of the feeders.  We did see good numbers of Common redpolls along various roads, but none at feeders.  We also had white-winged crossbills along spruce areas in several locations.  There were good numbers of sharp-tailed grouse along Riverside and 12th.  Also had turkeys at several locations. There was still a small group of tundra swans on the river near the Dunbar feeders.  Bald eagles were fairly common but we only saw two rough-legged hawks.  Only one N. shrike was seen along Riverside.  Around Rudyard, we found two snowy owls.  No other owls were seen during the trip.  Snow buntings were only seen at one location.  Near the end of the trip, we found a mixed flock of cedar and Bohemian waxwings along the Curly Lewis Highway east of M-123.  Along M-123 north of the Bear Butt Inn, we had our only evening grosbeaks.  We tried for boreal chickadee and gray jay along Basnau Rd. with no success.  We found no red crossbills, pine grosbeaks, or purple finches and only one pine siskin.

Although we ended with a decent number of winter species, we went for long periods without seeing birds.  We encountered no other birders and also learned that Antlers (the restaurant near the power plant) is now closed.

Chip Francke
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/mich-listers/attachments/20081208/e1b55bea/attachment.html