Shorebirds have been moving through for several days, without staying long. Because of a general lack of water, there aren’t many fluddles, so there are few places to look for them. The best is probably the pond on the south side of Oliver Road. I have stopped there 5 times in the last 3 days, and each time there was a different group of birds (up to 50). Unfortunately, I was not there at 5 pm last night, when Lee Johnson saw a Willet. The bird was gone by 5:15 this morning. Two Wilson’s Phalaropes were there Tuesday afternoon, but generally it has been the two Yellowlegs, Pecs and Least Sandpipers, a lone SB Dowitcher, and some Spot-ties and Solitaries. There was a large flight of Solitary Sandpipers yesterday, as I saw 34 of them at Nygren. Half a dozen were visible on the flats a couple of hundred yards east of the viewing platform, but the rest were at the west end of the oxbow, near the southeast corner of the Dianne Nora Nature Trail. There are Or-chard Orioles along the east side of the Trail, which coincides with the road going south from the buildings. Two pelicans were still at Nygren Tuesday evening, but gone Wednesday. One other place there have been shorebirds is along the west side of Harrison Road, just south of Shirland. There were also at least two American Pipits walking around there this morning.

Migration has been somewhat desultory to date, but I returned home this morning to a cacophony of sound in my yard in Shaw Woods. Orioles, grosbeaks, tanagers, thrushes, catbirds, hummingbirds, vireos, flycatchers, and many, many, many warblers, including Palm, Myrtle, Nashville, Redstarts, Black-throated Green, Chestnut-sided, Tennessee, Black-and-White, Parula, Magnolia, Cape May, Ovenbird, and Golden-winged. All kinds of FOY stuff. A good ear will be needed on the spring count Saturday, as vegetation is so far advanced, it looks more like summer than the first week of May.

Other observations, especially for whomever is doing my old spring count area in the city between the river and Boone County: There is a Yellow-throated Warbler to be heard the pines across the road from the park-ing lot at the end of Arlington Ave, as you enter Sinnissippi Park. If you continue up the one-way road past the golf course, there is another in about a half mile, near the picnic tables just past the parking lot with a large pile of sand. A Carolina Wren was singing constantly today in the small gully between 1777 and 1805 Kings Highway. Harder to find are the ones along Spring Creek going southwest from the bridge on Bradley Rd (thanks, Steve Gent), and the one that roams the woods between my house on Bellingham Rd and the houses on the circular part of Coachman Court. There is a Broad-winged Hawk nesting somewhere in Shaw Woods, and a Barred Owl often calls there in the daytime. There are no signs of Mississippi Kites yet.

Along Hauley Rd, a short ways north of Winslow, there are Bobolinks, Grasshopper Sparrows, Savannah Sparrows, and Vesper Sparrows. Dickcissels have apparently not arrived yet there or at Nygren.

It was a pleasure yesterday to observe a Cooper’s Hawk at Sugar River in its courtship display flight, with deep exaggerated wingbeats and its white undertail coverts flared out to the sides.

Finally, I saw a Gray-cheeked Thrush standing in the road at Sugar River FP yesterday. I mention this only because this is the first year that I have seen that species before seeing a Swainson’s Thrush.