I landed in Minneapolis-St. Paul this afternoon, and headed straight over to my favorite place in the city: Crosby Farm Regional Park, just across the river from the airport, at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. The weather could not be any better this time of year - 50, dry, and calm! Disappointing that I didn't arrive until about an hour before sunset, and missed most of an ideal day. It's wonderful to be back here.

I quickly got to work re-learning the continental birds. Of course after a year away many tweets sound very familiar, but I can't put the tweet to a beak. There was nothing on the pond except canada geese and perhaps some mallards in the mob. It was fairly quiet, with plenty of woodpeckers,which is normal near sunset. Mid-morning will be more revealing. Muskrats are really chewing up the trees badly.

Travelling count around the small pond loop trail, 1 hour, 1 km: 25+ BCCH, 30+ CANG, 5 DOWO, 6 WBNU, 4 RBWO, 3 NOCA, 5+ AMGO, 1+ WTSP. Also, flyovers of 5 AMCR and 2 large gulls.

Saturday's forecast is equally wonderful. Sherburne NWR is my preferred target tomorrow, provided there's no hunting going on. I finally got a bluetooth keyboard for my Nokia N800 pocket computer to make these journal entries much faster and easier, as well as my ebird entries and e-mail. I usually do these entries from The Comfy Chair at Coffee Bene in St. Paul or Caribou Coffee in White Bear Lake. Yay for free wireless!

No photos, since I'm on the road. I just attached an old otter photo from one of last year's visits to Crosby Farm Park.