A Short Walk, Some Hard Work and a New Species

This Sunday the Friends of Palmer Lake Park were doing a small-scale Buckthorn removal project at the park. The only problem was that the weather was downright terrible. After a string of relatively nice warm weather for November, it took a turn for the worse. I arrived a bit early, just enough to walk from the west parking lot to Shingle Creek and back again. There wasn't a whole lot to see in this short distance; some Juncos, Tree Sparrows, Chickadees, Canada Geese and Mallards in the creek. But I did see one interesting bird along the way that I don't see too often but am becoming more familiar with now. This Fox Sparrow was moving around in the lower parts of the dried up cattails. If you ever see what looks to be a common looking Sparrow but seems too large then it is probably a Fox Sparrow. The other clue is large patches of solid grey coloring around the head and neck with other common sparrows like Tree Sparrows and Song Sparrows wont have. I just read that Fox Sparrows nest in Canada and are only ever migrating through Minnesota -which would probably make this the last still-migrating bird I will have seen this season! After my very short walk I returned to the west side to get working on some Buckthorn removal as planned. The weather turned out to keep everyone else away save for just 3 of us, brave enough (or dumb) enough to want to work for a couple hours in this crummy weather. We made fantastic progress on a small area which you can see here on the FPLP facebook page. One of our "friends" for the day had said that he'd seen what he thought was a Snow Goose on the other side of the park before we started working. Afterwards we decided just for the heck of it to drive over to the other side and sure enough he was still there! This one, lone Snow Goose had tagged along with a small group of 10-15 Canada Geese who were moving slowly across the baseball field. As we watched we could tell that the Geese weren't exactly keen on this new, and different looking member of the group. When he would get too close, different Geese would nip at him and chase him away. It made me wonder why -or how- he got separated from his own group and ended up here. I'm pretty sure I've seen Snow Geese flying over the park before but this marks the first time I've positively identified one actually in the park. So another new species documented today!

Rain Soaked Saturday

I made it around the park today in near record time –just under an hour! I guess the rain prevented me from wanted to poke around any more than I did as everything was just wet. The raindrops clung to everything including these Buckthorn berries and I thought it was kind of an interesting sight. Still seeing the same mix of birds including Dark-eyed Juncos, Red-tailed Hawks, Cardinal, and lots of American Tree Sparrows. I was lucky enough to catch a half way decent photo of this Tree Sparrow somewhere along my route. It is maybe the closest I've been able to get to one so far. And speaking of Buckthorn berries, I spotted this male Cardinal chowing them down near the end of my walk. I guess the birds don't know that these berries give them diarrhea!

A Quiet November Day

Sunday morning at the park was another quite and uneventful walk. Most leaves are down already and it's hard to find any colorful ones still attached to anything. I took only 21 photos during my entire walk. The birds I saw included Mallards, a pair of Red-winged Hawks playing high above, Cardinal, Ring-billed Gulls and Dark-eyed Juncos.

The Constantly Changing Evironment of a Public Park

Well the behavior of people still amazes me as much as nature does. It almost never fails; every year I seem to find fallen leaves packed into plastic bags dumped in the park! I just cannot get over the irony of this. Whomever did this put something completely organic and compostable (in a very short time mind you) into plastic bags which will take many many years to decompose! I suppose you could say that they were "assuming" somebody would pick it up for them, but geez, what if they don't? They are quite literally making a conscious decision to pollute the park in my humble opinion!!! I just don't quite understand the thought process here. Well there was hardly anything else of interest to see today and for such a nice day it was eerily quiet. Our "seasonal" migratory birds definitely seem to be gone now, leaving the park to the Woodpeckers for a while. The only bird I did manage to get a shot of was this Dark-eyed Junco on the north side. For me they are another one of those birds that I never tire of as I cannot seem to get that perfect shot that I'm looking for. They are somewhat dull in color from the front but I've learned that they can be quite colorful from the back, showing some interesting blueish and purpleish color mixed in with the slate gray coloring. Somewhere in the last few days, the city (of Brooklyn Park?) decided to dredge out the drainage ditch that runs northeast to southwest and connects with Shingle Creek. The mud and muck that was dug out to make the ditch deeper was piled in gigantic mounds on the inside edge of the ditch, making an awfully ugly sight. Everybody that I know from the park has been looking at this and wondering exactly why it was done. I don't have a definitive answer but I did hear some stories that this is done in response to home owners living around the park who have concerns about water in their basements. I'm not sure if that's completely accurate or not. I think about just how far away the nearest residential home is to this area and it's quite a ways.