WISN Surveys near West Helena, AR

Yesterday we completed the township near West Helena, AR, where we had seen many snipe flying around the previous day. The ice on the trees was covered in a new frost, and in the sun, every tree looked like a Christmas tree. This cooper's hawk was a little too cold to move, and we got pretty close before he flew off.

cooper's hawk

I started off the day finding these two sleeping snipe in a field, and throughout the rest of the day we found only a handful more. All open water was frozen until around noon, so the snipe must have found open water elsewhere-but not in our transects.

Other highlights were double-crested cormorants sunning themselves in a tree near an open lake, american coots, numerous American pipits, and a juvenile bald eagle, that soared low over one of our transect lines for about 20 minutes.

American coot

double-crested cormorants

American pipit

juvenile bald eagle