Good evening, Today, I made a trip around Cayuga Lake with Evaristo Hernandez, Diane, and Aleta. We decided to go up the West side to try for the King Eider, which we had last heard was seen at Sheldrake Point. Dipped on that...but ran into Dave Nutter, Ann Mitchell, Bob Guthrie, and who I believe was Leona Lauster, all at Sheldrake Point for the same purpose. That's when we found out that it was sighted again on the opposite side of Cayuga Lake from us...at Myers Point in Lansing. Our original group decided to continue on up around the Lake, figuring we'd try to hit Myers Point before dark. On the way out, we also saw Bob McGuire who was scanning the loons for that other hopeful consolation prize the Pacific Loon (which was not there at that time).
Anyway, highlights from the day were several (7-10) Rough-legged Hawks along the auto loop at Montezuma NWR, 2 Snow Buntings at the Savannah Mucklands, 26 SANDHILL CRANES (one group of 20 and a group of 6) and many Tundra Swans at the Knox-Marcellus Marsh, 1 Eastern Screech-Owl at the Factory Street pond in Union Springs, thoughts of Short-eared Owls as we passed Rafferty Road..., and finally, the KING EIDER at Myers Point. We first stopped at the North point (DEC land) at Myers Point, to scan any ducks that could be hiding on that side. No Eider. But did see a total of four LONG-TAILED DUCKS from there. Then we headed straight for Ladoga Park (where the female King Eider hung out for several weeks one winter, a few years back). After a little bit of scanning around, the KING EIDER became evident just to the West, in the distance, over the tops of several dock pilings. We rejoiced and took some distant crummy shots for a while, then headed to the Private Marina, to see if that might offer a better vantage point. As I had suspected, the Eider was not visible from that little South lookout. It was out of sight and around the bend to the Southeast of the Private Marina. There weren't nearly as many diving ducks as were present when the female King Eider was here...which could be why she was around for so long and this bird keeps scooting around to different spots on the lake. It was really nice to get out birding with my family for a day and it was nice to get to know Evaristo better! Good birding! Sincerely, Chris T-H -- Christopher T. Tessaglia-Hymes TARU Product Line Manager and Field Applications Engineer Bioacoustics Research Program, Cornell Lab of Ornithology 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, New York 14850 W: 607-254-2418 M: 607-351-5740 F: 607-254-1132 http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
