See the message below that I am forwarding from
- the Wisconsin Birding Network, http://www.freelists.org/list/
wisbirdn .
--- Paul Hunter
Whitefish Bay, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin
http://home.roadrunner.com/~phunter1/lakeparkbirds.html
http://lakeparkbirds.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/LakeParkBirds/
=====================================================
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:50:23 -0500
Subject: [wisb] RED KNOT - Bradford Beach - Milwaukee
From: Tim Hahn <thahnbirder@gmail.com>
I took a quick jaunt to Bradford Beach over my lunch break to check for
shorebirds. I didn't anticipate the crowds of people hanging out at the
beach, but I also didn't anticipate that a flock of 75 or so shorebirds
would tolerate these crowds. The south end of the beach, just in
front of
the parking lot of the North Point Snack Bar, has a pretty good algae
mat
going, and the birds were so concentrated on eating that they
couldn't care
less about the people on the beach who were no more than thirty
away. The
flock was made of at least half Sanderlings, with the other half being
mostly peeps (Semipalmated, Least, and Baird's (1) SPs) and Semipalmated
Plovers. Also hanging out with this crowd was one RUDDY TURNSTONE
and one
juvenile RED KNOT. The human crowd was growing throughout the hour
I was
there, so who knows how long the birds will stay in this spot. They
didn't
seem to perturbed by the crowds though, only spooking a couple times, so
perhaps they'll stick around for the grub.
--
Cheers!
Tim Hahn
New Berlin, WI
(Waukesha Cty)
------------------------------
From: "Jym Mooney & Carol Lee Hopkins" <hopmoon@milwpc.com>
Subject: [wisb] Bradford Beach 8/29 - Red Knot, Ruddy Turnstones YES
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:13:07 -0500
I checked the south end of Bradford Beach at 5:30 this evening. Amazing
numbers of shorebirds on the algae mat! I counted at least 85
Sanderlings,
a Baird's SP, plus Semi-Palmated Plovers, Semi-Palmated SPs, the
juvenile
Red Knot, and two Ruddy Turnstones. As reported, all birds are fairly
oblivious to the people enjoying the beachfront.
I checked the rocks north of the beach, where there had been an
extensive
algae mat over the weekend, but it has all been washed away. No
wonder the
shorebirds are all clustered at the south end of the beach today.
Jym Mooney, Milwaukee
------------------------------
Subject: [wisb] Juvenile Red knot @ Bradford beach Milwaukee
From: Carl Schwartz <cschwartz3@wi.rr.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:49:47 -0500
Still there @ 6:45 pm in company of numerous peeps, semiplovers,
sanderlings & 4 turnstones
Carl Schwartz
Fox Point
Milwaukee County
Sent from my iPhone
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 17:36:48 -0700 (PDT)
From: "B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2@yahoo.com>
Subject: [wisb] Bradford Beach, Milwaukee, 8/29/11, AM - Shorebirds
galore!!
I hit Bradford Beach relatively early (for me) this morning, at about
8:30AM. I had the beach pretty much to myself at this time. There
were shorebirds everywhere along the edge of the beach! They were
quite noisy.
As Jym Mooney and Tim Hahn have reported, today there was a really
nice algae mat at the south end of Bradford Beach. On my walk past
the algae mat and northward along the beach I'm estimating there were
at least several hundred shorebirds. I took some photos, but most
didn't turn out very well because of the sun's glare (my camera only
has an LCD viewfinder). But I did manage one sort of blurred shot
that shows 30+ shorebirds on just a small section of the beach. This
shot was taken to the north of the algae mat: http://bit.ly/qGsmIh.
The birds were much thicker on the algae mat to the south.
Most of the birds I saw were Sanderlings, followed by Semi-palmated
Plovers, and Semi-palmated Sandpipers (and other unidentifiable peeps).
Here are the highlights:
* Two Baird's Sandpipers.
* Several Least Sandpipers.
* Several juvenile Ruddy Turnstones. 2011 BIGBY species #183.
* At least two juvenile Red Knots. 2011 BIGBY species #184, and new
life bird!
* At least one Greater Yellowlegs. 2011 BIGBY species #185.
* At least one Lesser Yellowlegs. 2011 BIGBY species #186.
I should mention that a work crew showed up today to clear away the
Bradford Beach algae mat. So I'm not sure how long the mat will be
there (it's kind of a slow process). But I talked to the work crew's
supervisor briefly this AM (he was observing the shorebirds with a
small pair of binoculars), and he mentioned that he hadn't seen that
many shorebirds on Bradford Beach algae mats before.
Bernie Sloan
Milwaukee
------------------------------
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