We happened upon Michael Mann and his young son out birding as well and they came along as we hiked out to the spot I had recon'd a couple days earlier based on the eBird report from Pam Albin. Needless to say it was a quick effort. We hadn't arrived at the location more than 2 minutes prior and heard call notes coming from just around the corner. We moved maybe 60' and 2 Townsend's quickly showed at eye level. This flagged pair for relative rarity was the first time I've seen more than one of the species at the same time. We lingered long enough for a few quick snaps/looks and left the Manns to try for better pictures and figured we saved a ton of time and could spend that looking for rare gulls or ducks.
After hiking less than 100 yards back out a gray bird flew just above our heads and landed in a Cedar tree. Without bins I was able to identify it as a Gray Catbird. Just a little bit out of it's normal time range. For me this eBird flagged bird was my latest since an October 9th sighting a few years back. It is not often you get to extend your latest date for a migrant species by over a month. This evening doing some research I found out based on MOU records only 2 other records are later for Gray Catbird in county history. Pretty sweet add to the list and a very nice November tic as well.
After the hike out we started hitting open water looking for something rare. That never really materialized as we checked out the Lock and Dam #2 area, Hazen Mooers Park, Grey Cloud Gravel Pit, and later Pete and I added Lake Elmo together. I even added some hike time at Bayport power plant hoping for some gulls while Pete checked the Afton Marina. Though we didn't turn up anything serious we did find a really solid count (~20) of Herring Gull at Hazen. This at least tells us that gull numbers are shifting rapidly with the cooler weather icing over key areas to the north.
You can't find rarities if you don't look and these open water routes late in the year are a great way to get familiar with your local area and see fluctuations in gull/duck populations. Knowing what bodies of water are largest, deepest, or spring fed will aid in knowing which will ice up last and present a great opportunity for water birds.
It was a great day of birding especially since we got our target birds right away and added a very out of season Catbird.
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