I forgot to mention yesterday that Tilden and I also saw a CACKLING GOOSE in
one of the small flocks that flew out of Knox-Marsellus Marsh last night.
T and I have done some back-of-the-envelope calculations regarding the
blackbirds we saw from the Tschache Pool tower last night. Our estimates of
total numbers have too much uncertainty to share with confidence, but here's
one result that I think is pretty robust.
* The biggest flock passed in a line for 120 seconds of spoken counting plus
10 minutes tracked on a wristwatch (I also forgot about the spoken count
when I posted yesterday), plus some time even before we started keeping
track.
* I estimate that this flock was flying about 10 m/sec (20 mph, rounded).
-- 12+ minutes (i.e. 0.2 hours) x 20 mph = a flock at least FOUR MILES
long.
Mark Chao
From: Mark Chao [mailto:markc...@imt.org]
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 10:27 PM
To: 'Cayugabirds- L'
Subject: Knox-Marsellus and Tschache Pool, Tues 3/26
* Probably the greatest spectacle of birds I've ever seen in the Basin or
maybe anywhere - hundreds of thousands of RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS and COMMON
GRACKLES passing by the tower at Tschache Pool at sunset. Several hundred
settled in the trees and marsh grasses right by the parking area, but most
flew past May's Point toward the Wildlife Drive. We saw at least ten dense
flocks of many hundreds of birds, stretching and folding like some genius
animator's abstract inventions. But most impressive was a single line of
blackbirds starting from the northwest to the southeast horizons, passing at
a rate of at least 100 per second and sometimes bulging to maybe several
hundred. This flock passed without pause for at least ten minutes -- we
timed it with a watch. The line mostly flowed smoothly like a stream in its
channel, but occasionally rose and fell in a resonant wave, as if
whip-snapped by a giant hand miles away.
I'll sit down and develop a more rigorous calculation before we enter data
in eBird, but I am pretty sure that there were several hundred thousand
birds, mostly Red-winged Blackbirds. Tilden would like to believe that
there were at least a million, and I think even this could well be accurate.
--
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