What an amazing day to be on the lakefront.  I was fortunate to bird with 
Jerry Talkington, Emil Bacik, and Ray Hannikman. Starting out at around 
8am at Headlands we found groups of horned grebes along with a few hooded 
mergansers in the water near the coast guard beach.  Walking out toward 
the lighthouse we searched the breakwalls for purple sandpiper but came up 
empty. We had a large group of 60+ tundra swans fly directly overhead 
early and in with the group was a red-throated loon. Large groups of rb 
mergansers were streaming over along with common loons, surf and black 
scoters and a small group of snow geese.  We had several small groups of 
dunlin streaming close to shore popping over the waves. Fun to watch! 
Another group of small shorebirds travelling W just off shore turned out 
to be pectoral sandpipers ID'd by Jerry...pretty amazing. About 2000+ 
bonaparte gulls were feeding just off the lighthouse but no little gull. 
We left the beach area to post up and do a lakewatch off Headlands Road 
which gave us some height to view the lake better. More dunlin, horned 
grebes, scoters, bufflehead, common loons. Then bingo Jerry spots 2 RED 
PHALAROPES travelling W beside a few mergs. Shortly after, 2 groups of 
mergansers (about 75+ in each group) were heading W close to shore and 
Jerry spots a small duck was nestled in the first group. A single juvenile 
HARLEQUIN DUCK. Fantastic!! The lighting was great on these birds today. 
We decided to check out Eastlake to try to pick through the bonaparte's 
for little gull. We didn't find the bird but there were about 1500+ 
mergansers in the harbor and about 2000+ bonaparte's and 1 great black-
backed gull. It was such a fantastic day today it was hard for me to stop 
and drive home so I decided to go W toward Huron.  I met up with Helen 
Taft and we drove to Huron Harbor searching the massive bonaparte flock 
for little gull. No luck but we did have 1 common tern in the flock and 
had great looks of that bird.  The grand finale happened at 4:00 when a 
massive flock of 10,000+ rb mergansers started streaming over along with a 
few scaup heading E. That was an INCREDIBLE sight. Have fun out there and 
peruse those flocks for rarities!!

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