This morning I got out for a couple hours of birding before focusing on getting materials for our “shed raising” tomorrow at Brett’s. First stop was “the Gog” where I was not able to find the Lapland longspur found last evening by Michael Charest. On my first loop around the middle pond, on the far end of the lookout over the first pond, I was trying to pish out a Fox sparrow, and as I got close a Barn owl silently flushed at very close range. It took flight, turned to look at me with its big white heard-shaped face, then calmly flew away to the big trees beside the first pond. By far the coolest bird of the day. Savannah sparrows were everywhere, SOSP, GCSP and WCSP were prevalent, and the grass was too high and wet to really trod around the center of the center area much trying to flush the LALO, though I tried a bit.
Next I went to Titlow Beach looking for the Heermann’s gull that Bruce had recently. No luck with that either, though it was fun do compare all three cormorant species on the piers.

From there the day was downhill, as it took all day just to gather the materials from Home Depot. The order was not ready for pickup, I waited almost 2 hours to get first half of the order, and then it was one fiasco after another the rest of the day. Let’s hope the construction goes more smoothly.