Our next stop was a little to the north were we noticed a huge mixed flock of birds in a field. One of the first birds that I put my binoculars on was a breeding plumaged Lapland Longspur. As we sorted through the flock, we picked out many Horned Larks and a few American Pipits. I heard a few Smith's Longspurs fly overhead but we were unable to find them so we moved on. We had heard that many birders had seen some Smith's Longspurs in fields along 500N so we made that our next stop. We found almost nothing in the field for the first few minutes but Eric finally found some birds moving in the field. They were Smith's Longspurs! It was a lifer for Eric but unfortunately, Clare got to the scope to late and missed them. When they flew, we realized that there were actually 7 of them even though we had only seen 2 when they were on the ground. That just seems to be the way it goes with Smith's Longspurs.
On our way over to Willow Slough, we found a few Rusty Blackbirds that were cooperative enough to pose for a few photos.
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Rusty Blackbird |
We were pretty happy to have found one of our two targets for the day and we had a wonderful day in the field.
-Rob
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