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Lapland Longspur



Dear Carolinabirders:
Earlier today I wrote in reporting a Lark Sparrow at the Battery Buchanan
at Fort Fisher during our Big Sit. I was wrong (and boy, am I glad I was
wrong): We had been looking at a Lapland Longspur!

While we were looking at it I thought that not all the detials checked out
and the one that did not square at all was that it mad a dry, rattling
'tek-tek-tek" as it took flight around the battery when we flushed it. But
I simply dismissed this as one alarm call note that Sibley had omitted
mentioning in his book. I should have persisted in looking further in the
book till I arrived at the Longspurs. One of our party, Andy Webb, just
wrote in saying that later, after I left, they got a few more looks at the
bird and correctly identified it as an adult nonbreeding plumaged lapland
Longspur. Needless to say I feel rather stupid, especially since for me
this is a life-bird. THis winter I had looked high and low for this bird
at the Dairyland Farms and not seen even a shadow of one,but now here it
was at our Big Sit.

IF  you go looking for it: Look in the short grass just below the top of
Battery Buchanan. When I flushed it it was on the side of the hill facing
the Rocks. There is a tidal pool just below the hill on the side facing
the rocks and the bird was in the grass around the edge of the pool as
well as a little further up the slope where the grass starts to give way
to very young yaupon draped with smilax. WHen it flushed up from the grass
it would often take cover in this slightly higher vegetation and it always
did its dry rattle as it flushed. It seemed reluctant to fly too far,
somaybe it will stay put.


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SHANTANU PHUKAN
Lecturer in Urdu-Hindi & Indian Literature
University of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill
Curriculum in Asian Studies
Alumni Hall 413C
Chapel Hill, N.C. 27599

phukan@email.unc.edu
919-962-6825
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