Loons and more (1 Viewer)

Recently, people have been reporting Common Loons (up to fifteen of them) at Smithville Lake, Smithville, Missouri. This is about 40 miles from Saint Joseph, where I live. I have been down there a couple of times this fall and seen some "good" birds. I suppose I saw about all the Common Loons, but also saw a Red-throated Loon, Red-necked Grebe, Horned Grebe and Eared Grebe. In addition I saw Ring-billed Gulls, Bonaparte's Gulls and several duck species. Saturday I was able to observe one Western Grebe and one Clark's Grebe. They were swimming and diving side by side giving me a good comparison between the two species.

Smithville Lake is a man-made lake which was created with a very large earthen dam. It is not too far from Kansas City, a large metropolitan area, so there are quite a few fishermen, boaters, campers, etc which come to the lake. At times this does disturb the waterfowl, but the lake is so large that they can usually find safe haven on some other part of the lake when they are disturbed. It just makes finding them more difficult at those times.

Larry

Do you ever see Double-crested Cormorants there? With all those other great species you mentioned, I'd be surprised if you never see cormorants. That's a bird that I see quite a lot at the little lakes that I can get too.
The ones by me are man-made too.

Hi Marcus,

Yes, I see Double-crested Cormorants here as well as American White Pelicans. I guess they just "slipped through the cracks" when I was listing the species that I had been seeing. The cormorants and pelicans are more common here and I was highlighting in birds we see less frequently.

Larry