Re: [MDOsprey] Dickcissel Where Art Thou?

Paul Bystrak (pbystrak@dpnet.net)
Thu, 27 May 1999 23:12:19 -0500


Not to be critical or anything, but Grinnell has 2 Ls and is only about
1100 miles from Oland Road, but you're right about the dickcissels, there
are gobs of them everywhere around central Iowa right now. Linda and I went
out to a small prairie east of Ames, IA last evening and there were about
5-6 singing males/acre.  Also a nice colony of yellow-headed blackbirds and
a lot of grasshopper and vesper sparrows.  Shorebirds included several
hudsonian godwits in breeding plummage along with dozens of golden plovers
similarly outfitted.  Plus dunlins, leasts, semi sands and plovers, spotted
and killdeers. Strangely, there were no marsh or sedge wrens, both of which
are common at some of the other prairies in the area.  Each prairie seems
to be a little different, probably because nearly all of them are manmade.
Harrier marsh near Boone, Ia has breeding great-tailed grackles, probably
the only one in central Iowa so blessed. We had a No. Mockingbird at
Green-wing prairie, one of the very few records this far north.  We were
looking at LeConte's sparrows when it flew by.  The local people were far
more excited by the mockingbird.  

We are going to Winnipeg, MB this weekend to go birding.  Anyone have any
ideas of places to go around there?  Would like to see breeding Baird's
sparrows and yellow rails, both of which we missed in migration this spring.  


At 11:16 PM 5/27/99 -0400, you wrote:
>I went to Oland Rd. today in an attempt to see a Dickcissel. No luck. 
>Last year, I stopped at Oland Rd. as I was heading west in June. I did 
>not see one until I was 1800 miles west of here in Grinnel, Iowa.
>
>Elliot Kirschbaum
>Baltimore, MD USA
>mailto:ekirschb@bcpl.net
>