Livia and I checked Stewart Park at lunch today. Although it was raining steadily, the lake was very calm and ducks were easy to see around the weed mats towards the east end of the park. We didn't find anything that hasn't been around for a while, but did see the continuing male GREATER SCAUP, 2 female RING-NECKED DUCKS, female RUDDY DUCK, 3 AMERICAN WIGEON, Hooded Merganser, AMERICAN COOT, at least 5 Pied-billed Grebes, multiple American Black Ducks, and tons of Mallards. A MERLIN was perched on the dead tree on the swan pen island, an adult BALD EAGLE was in a small dead snag along the shore of the swan pen, and an immature BALD EAGLE flew by out of jetty woods.
The most notable sighting, however, was the fact that the famous large snag across the channel from the boat house (the cormorant/osprey/eagle/Merlin/Peregrine tree) is GONE. I haven't been to Stewart Park for a few days, so I don't know when this happened, and I also couldn't tell WHAT exactly happened. It looks like it might be broken at the base, so perhaps it finally fell over from natural causes and was cleared away to keep the channel open. I would be interested to know if anyone has more information about this. In any case, I consider this a huge loss to the birding community. It will be missed. -- Jay McGowan Macaulay Library Cornell Lab of Ornithology jw...@cornell.edu -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
