Last night I talked Mr. Johnson into taking me out for a little birding drive after supper. We drove over to the flood-control reservoir a couple miles from home and found just a little bit of ice left in the SE corner, but otherwise all open water. We saw common mergansers, lesser scaup, canvasbacks, some gulls (herring or ring-billed, I couldn't tell for sure), but most exciting was a pair of American white pelicans at the far side of the lake. We then drove to my favorite birding place out in rural Olmsted county. There are many acres of CRP grassland here and it's also very quiet (far away from highway noise). We saw a pair of Northern Harriers and also a pair of Common Snipe flying around and making their "winnowing" noise. If you've heard this before, you know what an unusual sound it is. We also saw dozens of Eastern Wild Turkeys and heard a few Ring-Necked Pheasants (in addition to the usual red-winged blackbirds and song sparrows). Unfortunately, I was unable to get photos of any of these sightings.
Today was another sunny and warm day, spoiled only by strong winds from the south: sustained in the 30 mph range and gusts of 49 mph. On days like today, I can certainly understand why pioneer folk on the prairies were said to be driven mad by the wind.
The most annoying thing about the wind is the fact that debris from my disgusting neighbor's "junkyard"......
.......blows into my backyard
I'm going to wait till the wind dies down again and throw all this crap back over there!
And then I'm going to take some more pictures and plan to attend an upcoming township meeting to see what (if anything) can be done to force this guy to clean up his place. His place a total dump and has lowered the property value of our place and also our good neighbor who lives on the other side of this "junkyard." The most pathetic thing about this whole deal is that this neighbor is self-employed, specializing in.........HOME IMPROVEMENT!!
