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!
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!
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