My Birding Morning around St. Joseph, Missouri Oxbows (1 Viewer)

I birded around Saint Joseph's oxbow lakes for a couple of hours this morning and was rather pleased to tally 52 species of birds. It was hot (83 F.) and dry (lots of dust) as I drove around the various lakes. I am continually losing birding habitat as more and more hedge rows are cut down and bull-dozed to make room for a few more rows of crop. This area which I call "my patch" around these oxbows lakes is more and more being converted to crop land for corn and soybeans. It has certainly been a downhill spiral in so far as the avian population is concerned. So here is the list of birds which I recorded this morning.

Snow Goose
Canada Goose
Wood Duck
Blue-winged Teal
Northern Shoveler
Wild Turkey
American White Pelican (300 at Mud Lake)
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Turkey Vulture
Red-tailed Hawk
Peregrine Falcon (one on Lake Contrary, strafing the flocks of shore birds on the west end of the lake)
Semipalmated Plover
Killdeer
Spotted Sandpiper
Solitary Sandpiper
Lesser Yellowlegs
Semipalmated Sandpiper
Least Sandpiper
Pectoral Sandpiper
Stilt Sandpiper
Rock Pigeon
Eurasian Collared-Dove
Mourning Dove
Hairy Woodpecker
Eastern Phoebe
Loggerhead Shrike (I used to get this species just any day I would go out around the oxbows. Now they are more or less extirpiated from the area and are only rarely seen. The single individual I saw was sitting on a utility wire on 41st Road with numerous starlings and Lark Sparrows.)
American Crow
Horned Lark
Purple Martin
Tree Swallow
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
Bank Swallow
Barn Swallow
Black-capped Chickadee
Eastern Bluebird
American Robin
European Starling
Chipping Sparrow
Lark Sparrow
Northern Cardinal
Indigo Bunting
Red-winged Blackbird
Eastern Meadowlark
Common Grackle
Great-tailed Grackle
Brown-headed Cowbird
Orchard Oriole
American Goldfinch
House Sparrow

Nice list, Larry. I hate when I lose part of my patch.