> Fellow birders:
>
> FINALLY!
>
> Yesterday and the day before I was finally rewarded with birds. Everywhere I went was a joy-spring of avian delight.. .okay.. okay.. enough purple prose.
>
> After several weeks of no birds, I found 3 species of vireos (Warbling, Yellow-throated and Philadelphia) in my front yard Tuesday AM, with Tennessee and Yellow-rumped warblers. They were joined yesterday by Ruby-crowned Kinglets and American Restarts. I headed to the outdoor campus, but got side-tracked at “the Hole” off Kiwanis Ave at Sertoma Park (Oxbow Park). 5 more species of warbler (best a Canada) and bluebirds.
>
> Excited to finally be seeing birds in Sioux Falls, I headed out to Farm Field Park and got more birds including a Black and White Warbler and Swainson’s Thrush. Took a trip out to our west Minnehaha County wetlands and found 3 Great Egrets and only 1 Great Blue Heron. No shorebirds other than 3-4 Killdeer.
> But I found a traveling group of gulls headed south—way high I could only surmise that most were ring-billed and the smaller ones were Franklin’s. One extra large one was probably a Herring, but no ID possible. For all I know is it was a Kelp Gull. (No, it wasn’t.)
While looking at this trail of high up gulls I saw that some were not gulls. Luckily I got to see they were kettling and were not with the gull-train. They were lower and were Braid-singed Hawks.
