Bird Langauge, Oct 6

On Saturday, October 6, we met for a cool and breezy Bird Language sit at the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge Visitor's Center. We sat along the forest edge near the open field just to the east of the Center. The breeze was coming out of the northwest and made it challenging to hear bird sounds. Jon sat behind the observation deck of out the wind where he observed quite a bit of bird activity being so close to the feeders by the Center. During the sit he saw Yellow-rumped Warblers and American Gold Finches near his spot. He also had a good view of the large dead tree in the middle of the open field which American Robins used as a perch, displayed sentinel activity, sounded mild alarms, and moved in small groups, behavior which could be related to fall flocking activity. In the middle of our sit area we heard several unidentified birds making sharp and short contact calls with each other that persisted throughout the sit. We didn't settle on an ID, but were wondering whether some migrants were stopping to feed. The corvids were active, with Blue Jay calls in the south during Period 1 and American Crows flying about at different times and locations during the sit.