It must be spring!

The Wildlife Drive at Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge opened for the season on Saturday April 23rd. On May 3rd I made my first circuit of the year as a Roving Wildlife Interpreter. The bright sun, blue sky and small clumps of white clouds cast a strange light on the brown remnants of last years vegetation. The long cold winter and our cold spring weather seem to have retarded that welcome first flush of green. Birds were not plentiful. The only advantage in having no green grass in most areas was that the little ground-dwelling birds that normally hid there were fully exposed to view. Good for birders perhaps, but not good for them.

My spirits picked several notches when I came across this woodcock, a member of the sandpiper family. The odd ritualistic mating flights of this bird have provided many evenings of rapt viewing for birders and have made this bird an icon of spring in our part of the birding world. Maybe warmer spring weather is just around the corner.

Woodcock

Here a link to a couple of U-Tube videos. This one shows the mating dance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9deSfyqkEQ&NR=1

This one from my friends at Eagle Optics is on how to locate woodcocks at night.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtqxREKfvPM&feature=fvsr