Tuesday, December 4, 2007

A Cool Coincidence

Reading some postings on BirdChat last night I came across a note from a professor in California who posted the sighting of a color banded Marbled Godwit (Limosa fedoa) in southern California. He asked if anybody wanted to "claim" the bird and I had one of those "aha!" moments. At last Saturday's MOU paper session, Bridget Olson gave a talk on her research on Marbled Godwits at Bear River NWR in Utah. The color band observed in California matches the marking protocol Bridget is using and I believe it is one of her birds. I sent a quick note to the poster and hope to hear back as to whether he contacted Bridget or not. The connection Bridget has to Minnesota is that she used to be out at Big Stone NWR in the western part of the state.

On a more local note, birding has slowed down with the recent change in weather. My area got about 5"-6" of snow on Saturday and it is presently snowing with another 3"-4" predicted to fall by this evening. My feeders have been buried by snow so not much is coming in. The box feeder has seed accessible and the squirrels are helping uncover the rest. Lakes are now frozen so lots of stuff is showing up at the hot pond next to the Blackdog powerplant.

Time to hunker down.

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