Earlier this week, nearly all of Lake Superior was covered with ice as shown at: http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/modis/modis.cgi/modis?region=s&page=1 Balmy temperatures and west winds today created open areas of water along the North Shore, which helped concentrate waterfowl in a few areas. Late this afternoon, I was fortunate to find no fewer than 232 Long-tailed Ducks on Lake Superior off Stoney Point, St. Louis County. The birds were initially in two large flocks which eventually coalesced into one noisy, bobbing raft of bathtub toys. Their loud vocalizations were easily heard from a distance of 1/4 mile. This is by far the largest flock of Long-taileds that I have seen in the Duluth area. Jan Green kindly supplied a compilation of records of this species from the North Shore and I combined those records with high counts from Karl Bardon's Occasional Paper from several years ago. As most of you know, the highest counts of Long-tailed Ducks in Minnesota are from Cook County. As far as I can determine, only one previous count from St. Louis County exceeds my total from today -- 250 on the Duluth CBC, 2 Jan 1960 (Flicker 32:83). There is also a count of 397 Long- taileds during a winter count from Fond du Lac (St. Louis County) to Knife River (Lake County), 2 January 1956 (Flicker 28:159). It is unknown whether either of these two totals consisted of single flocks, and the latter count may have included birds from two different counties. Here are the counts of ≥ 230 birds from these sources. I thank Jan Green and Karl Bardon for compiling these data. 1000s fall 1948 17 mi NE Grand Marais Abbott, SR 21:115 1,000+ 12-Feb 1961 Tofte-Grand Marais, Cook County Green 1975 800 (one of 17 flocks in two days) 12-Feb 1950 near Cascade River S.P., Cook County Barrett 1950 750 19-Feb 1949 Cook County Hayward 1949 700 Feb 1948 Gooseberry Falls S.P., Cook County Hayward 1949 700 Feb 1948 near Two Harbors, Lake County Hayward 1949 500 appr. 25 Dec 1952 within 20 mi of Grand Marais Hanlon et al., SR 25:39 452 8-Dec 1999 Cascade River to Hovland, Cook County Bardon, SR 72:146 348 16-Dec 1995 Grand Marais CBC SR 68:146 300+ late Dec 1984 Cook County Hoffman, SR 57:124 300 28-Nov 1981 Cook County LaFond, SR 54:117 300 11-Nov 1965 Cook County Allin, SR 38:49 250 15-Feb 1964 3 locations, Lake County Green, pers. records 250 2-Jan 1960 Duluth CBC fide G. Kuyava, Flicker 32:83 233 28-Dec 1956 Grand Marais CBC Flicker 30:95 232 6-Mar 2009 Stoney Point, St. Louis County Svingen, SR ***** -- Peder Svingen Duluth, MN ---- Join or Leave mou-net:http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives:http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html