I was only out a little on both days, but here are a few weekend highlights:
On Saturday mid-day, there were a lot of birds evident off Stewart Park, although I only had about 30 minutes to scan. Over 100 BUFFLEHEAD were in scattered rafts very far out -- there may well have been other ducks among them that I missed (no Long-tailed Ducks for me). A small pod of HORNED GREBES were near the jetties and at least 5 breeding-plumaged COMMON LOONS were widely scattered. Four AMERICAN WIGEON were very vocal near the shore. A tight flock of 40+ TREE SWALLOWS zig-zagging over the inlet had at least 1 NORTHERN ROUGH-WINGED SWALLOW among them. On Sunday, I was surprised to see a dark-morph ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK flying north over Hanshaw Rd. at Bluegrass Lane in the afternoon -- the bird was fairly high and the wind was out of the south at that time, so this could have been a migrant. There was also a male AMERICAN KESTREL in the fields and a CHIPPING SPARROW among JUNCOs along the field edge. Excited by the reported fallout on Dryden Lake, I did another afternoon scan of Cayuga Lake from East Shore Park, and was disappointed to find a mostly empty lake. None of the rafts of ducks from yesterday were evident and I only saw a single LOON. Two sleeping male RUDDY DUCKS were the only apparent fallout candidates. KEN Ken Rosenberg Conservation Science Program Cornell Lab of Ornithology 607-254-2412 607-342-4594 (cell) k...@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/ --
