Having seen/heard 96 new birds so far for the year, I started out today thinking, maybe, I could find 100 for the month of January. (Silly game - but it gets me outside!)
I hung around a private feeder until 9 am when the Purple Finch showed up. Beautiful male, backlit by the sun. #97. Then I spent an hour at the compost piles picking through the hundreds of gulls that were waiting to be fed from the CU dining halls' refuse. Ring-billed, Herring, and Great Black-backed Gulls of all ages but no white-winged gulls. (Checking in later with Jay, he missed them today as well.) There was a report of Red-necked Grebe yesterday at Ladoga (how come the report never made it to the listserve and/or the RBA??). Scoping into the brisk south wind was not fun, but I did manage to find what I thought might have been the grebe. It was bouncing around in the waves and then went to rest with its head tucked - and then disappeared altogether. So I had to make due with a Tompkins County Eared Grebe. And lots of Long-tailed Ducks. Just about then Steve Fast showed up with an invitation to lunch at Dories, so off we went. >From the boathouse in Aurora we spotted at least 10 Horned Grebes (no Eared >Grebe there) plus the expected Goldeneye, Buffleheads, and a few White-winged >Scoters. There were no White-fronted Geese at Farleys and none among the >hundreds of Canadas on Mill Pond in Union Springs. The rest of the lake north >was frozen except for a channel between Cayuga and Mud Lock. No Lesser >Black-backed Gull at Dean's Cove. No grebes of loons along Elm Beach Road - >but there were two WW Scoters. Finally, back to Ithaca and up again to Ladoga. Where I did, finally, get a satisfactory look at the Red-necked Grebe. #98 for the year. Still one more day, but I'm beginning to think that 100 in January is out of reach - for me anyway. Bob McGuire -- 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/ --
