My Macomb County list got off to a great start today.... I left my house at 10am and headed toward Metrobeach (sorry, Lake St. Clair park... yuck).. along the way I glassed the fields from my house, along 25 mile rd to hall Rd, down I94 to Metroparkway and then headed toward the park...
First on my agenda was to find one of the Snowy Owls... This was fairly easy as it was already found by other birders at the DNR station on South River Rd... It was sitting along the rock out-cropping near the Marina... I hopped out of my car, looked thru their scope and there it was... a Juvenile Snowy Owl... I bumped into Tom Heatly there and we scoped the lake near the station... There was a large raft of waterfowl... Common Mergansers, Canvasbacks, Lesser Scaups, Buffleheads and Common Goldeneyes were plentiful... In addition to those were a single coot, a Red-breasted Merganser and a few Gadwall... while walking back to our vehicles a Coopers Hawk soared by... a nice looking Adult...
I headed over to Metrobeach from there. Tom and I were going to walk to the point and scope Lake St. Clair... Tom had seen a Merlin a day or two before in some trees near the parking lot, and when we got out, he scoped them from a distance, and the Merlin was sitting right there... waiting for us... its probably the same bird that I photographed a few weeks earlier, as it has been seen by several people since then. The wind was picking up but we decided to keep walking... once we reached the lake we saw a group of 4 small gulls fly by... Bonaparte Gulls... sweet.... as we neared the tip, 3 Long-tailed Ducks came flying in and landed in the lake, only 20 yards from shore... by this time it was nearly 1PM and the wind was really picking up... so I headed for the car.... Thinking I was done for the day, I headed for the exit.... Nope, one last good bird to see... Over the North Marsh an Adult Bald Eagle came soaring by..... what a great way to end my first day of birding for 2012.... 32 Species on the day... a nice start to my Macomb County list for 2012...
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