Hi all, Today, Ton and I went up the east side of Cayuga Lake to Montezuma, starting at Stewart Park at 11 am and ending at the Potato building on route 31 at 4:30. (By the way, as I was typing this just now, I saw the posting by Bob McGuire of his and John Confer’s trip up the lake today. We managed to either miss or see fewer of the cool birds they saw! Amazing how that happens…!)
The weather was magnificent and the lake from Stewart Park was calm and smooth. Mark Chao already mentioned the many BUFFLEHEAD, RUDDY DUCKS and the female BLACK SCOTER, all of which were still there at 11 am. In addition , there were 3 DOUBLE CRESTED CORMORANTS, many GREAT BLACK BACKED, HERRING and RING-BILLED Gulls. MALLARDS and COMMON MERGANSERS made appearances, as did a GREAT BLUE HERON, KINGFISHER and HOUSE SPARROW, all at the Swan Pen. >From there we headed north, stopping first at Myers Point where we were >delighted to find a PEREGRINE FALCON perched at the top of a tree at Salt >Point, just northwest of the Osprey platform. There were lots of gulls on the >sandbar and 2 COMMON LOONS far to the north but not much else. We were >worried that all of the loons had left, but this was certainly not the case, >as I will describe soon. Lake Ridge Road provided a flock of about 30 BROWN-HEADED COWBIRDS, mostly females, with about 5 female/young RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS mixed in. Soon after leaving Lake Ridge Rd. and joining Rte 90, we found 12 TURKEYS in a field on the west side of the road, just before the DEC deer check station. We followed Lake Rd. next, where we found the first of 2 KESTRELs for the day. Long Point State Park was our destination, where we had lunch on the north side of the park while counting COMMON LOONS. We ended up counting at least 80 LOONS from the park and are sure there were many more. They were in groups of 1 – 5, diving, fishing and preening in the sun on the glass-like water. Continuing on to Aurora, we found many more LOONS as well as 7 HORNED GREBES, viewed from the parking lot above the Aurora boathouse. We also found a very, very large and distant raft of white birds floating in the middle of the lake, off to the northwest. We are pretty sure this was a huge flock of SNOW GEESE, but we really couldn’t confirm it. Did anyone else see them, to confirm? Just past Levanna, we came across a flock of several hundred STARLINGS and one irate MOCKINGBID who was trying to keep them out of his/her tree! We heard GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLETS in the same area. Factory Road Pond in Union Springs held one GREEN-WINGED TEAL, 1 GALDWALL and one BUFFLEHEAD. The larger pond along 90 in Union Springs had BUFFLEHEAD, GADWALL.2 REDHEAD DUCKS, which we thought was pretty cool until we found a flock of probably 600 or more Redheads and SCAUP sp just south of Townline Rd. (the road just before the railroad tracks and opposite the road to Lettie Cook Forest)! The light was really bad so it was hard to tell how many of the birds were Redheads and how many Scaup, but it was very impressive indeed. The wildlife drive at Montezuma NWR didn’t have many birds, but we did find good numbers of SHOVELER, COOTS, SCAUP and RINGNECKED DUCKS. Tschache Pool provided the only BALD EAGLE for the day, an adult that was sitting on a clump of grass in the middle of the open water, very close to the parking area. Finally, we hit East Road and the Knox-Marsellus marsh which was FULL of TUNDRA SWANS (many hundreds), PINTAILED DUCKS, MALLARDS, GREAT BLUE HERONS, SHOVELERS, GREEN-WINGED TEAL, one MARSH HARRIER and, most special of all for us, 37 SANDHILL CRANES. The cranes were all together along the edge of the corn, easily seen from East Road but quite far off. We drove to the Potato Building on Rte 31 to try for a better view, but ended up looking back into the setting sun. We still managed to see the birds and ended our day watching them graze with the sun setting behind them. The full list is below. This was the first trip up the lake we have managed to take since the spring! It was a great day. Laura Stenzler and Ton Schat Cayuga Lake Basin, US-NY Nov 16, 2013 11:00 AM - 4:30 PM Protocol: Traveling 60.0 mile(s) Comments: Up and back on the east side of the lake, Stewart Park to East Road, MNWR. 48 species Snow Goose X Canada Goose X Tundra Swan X Gadwall X American Black Duck X Mallard X Northern Shoveler X Northern Pintail X Green-winged Teal X Redhead X Ring-necked Duck X Greater Scaup X Black Scoter 1 female plumage, stewart park with bufflehead Bufflehead X Common Merganser 5 Ruddy Duck X Wild Turkey 12 Common Loon X Horned Grebe 7 Double-crested Cormorant 3 Great Blue Heron X Turkey Vulture 17 Northern Harrier 1 Bald Eagle 1 Red-tailed Hawk 6 American Coot X Sandhill Crane 37 Knox-Marsellus marsh Ring-billed Gull X Herring Gull X Great Black-backed Gull X Rock Pigeon X Belted Kingfisher 1 Red-bellied Woodpecker 1 Hairy Woodpecker 2 American Kestrel 2 American Crow X Black-capped Chickadee 2 White-breasted Nuthatch 1 Golden-crowned Kinglet 2 American Robin 1 Northern Mockingbird 1 European Starling X Dark-eyed Junco 3 Northern Cardinal 1 Red-winged Blackbird X Brown-headed Cowbird 30 American Goldfinch 1 House Sparrow 1 This report was generated automatically by eBird v3 (http://ebird.org) Laura Stenzler l...@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/ --
