After dark

69 cackling goose
70 Wilson's snipe
71 American woodcock
(total on this date in 2006: 64)

MARCH 6, EAGLE BLUFFS, sunny, 50—This is probably a bad time for my boycott describing birds: thousands of waterfowl are feeding and resting at Eagle Bluffs, including 40 or so white pelicans. Across Missouri, entire landscapes are full of birds—half a million snow geese, for example, at Grand Pass conservation area. (They're gone now.)

Early spring is also the time for the strange woodcock's strange sunset mating flight (descriptions here and here). In brushy grass a couple hundred yards from the Missouri River I heard my first peents of the year.