To follow up on Dave's thorough but modest summary of our dike walk yesterday, I thought I would share a few of my and Livia's sightings from the weekend. We went up to Montezuma on Saturday afternoon, spent the evening there, camped at Cayuga Lake State Park, and joined the group for the walk out from Towpath Road on Sunday morning. Despite passing a rainy night in the tent, it was a very enjoyable outing. Highlights:
--The pier at Frontenac Harbor continues to host plenty of gulls and occasionally Caspian Terns, but no more Common Terns or Bonaparte's Gull that I have detected since July 5th and 27th, respectively. --The Visitor Center Pool is very dry with plowed dirt, not too great for most shorebirds but potentially excellent for a Buff-breasted to drop in on. Nine SEMIPALMATED PLOVERS and two Killdeer were all that we could find Saturday afternoon. --The Wildlife Drive was pretty slow at 3PM on Saturday. A good group of yellowlegs with over 30 Caspian Terns were at Shorebird Flats, so good potential for something cool there. The Snow Goose continues, today preening on dirt piles near the end of the drive. --Two adult and one juvenile RED-HEADED WOODPECKER were in the usual area in the dead snags on the left on Mays Point Road around 3:30 on Saturday. All three then flew off across the road and across the lock into the forest along the canal. --Knox-Marsellus from East Road at 3:45 Saturday produced the continuing pair of HUDSONIAN GODWITS, as well as poor views of lots of other shorebirds. More on K-M shorebirds below. Of note was a group of 12 AMERICAN GOLDEN-PLOVERS out on the flats, not seen by others that morning nor by us later in the evening (but perhaps the same birds WERE present on Sunday.) --As Sara Jane posted, the large, long field at the SE corner of Armitage and Rt. 89 is plowed and appealing. We checked it three times over the course of the weekend. No Buff-breasted, but a very likely spot. We had SANDHILL CRANES twice, first six on Saturday then seven on Sunday, as well as 40+ Killdeer and scattered Horned Larks. --The Montezuma Audubon Center on Saturday evening was active, but lighting was not ideal. Stilt Sandpiper and many Short-billed Dowitchers, as well as lots of peeps. --East Road around 6:30 produced mostly the same shorebirds. A fresh juvenile BONAPARTE'S GULL with the gull flock and a flyover WILSON'S SNIPE were the most notable additions. --As Dave Wheeler has posted, the GREAT EGRET flyby at Tschache in the evening is interesting, if not exactly spectacular. We counted 116 from 7:00-8:00PM on Saturday, and probably missed a few that might have come by earlier. A lot landed in the back left part of Tschache and then eventually took off and continued SW. It wasn't clear what their final destination might be. The swallow and blackbird clouds in the distance were dramatic as well. --Sunday morning was wet and drear, and our plans of checking the Audubon Center and doing some landbirding early were dashed. Instead we headed straight for Towpath but were distracted on the way by a gull fallout of sorts at the Chiropractic College in Seneca Falls off Rt. 89, where 650+ HERRING GULLS and several hundred Ring-billed Gulls were joined by 30 Great Black-backed Gulls and a single 2nd-cycle type LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL in the lawns around the college. I was hoping for a Buff-breasted or other grasspipers on the golf course or lawns, but the closest we came was a flock of about 14 LESSER YELLOWLEGS that flew over several times, perhaps looking for a wetter place to land. --As Dave has already posted, the walk out the dike from Towpath Road to see the shorebirds at Knox-Marsellus was damp but fruitful. We got good looks at the two HUDSONIAN GODWITS, mostly foraging in deep water but occasionally walking up onto the shore. As expected for this time of year, they are molting adults. Some of us got to see them fly several times. Photo here: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/P0NYvvKd_ErSLZcAkpXhTdMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink --Up to seven adult BLACK-BELLIED PLOVERS, the majority still with fairly bright alternate plumage were always visible on the flats, and eventually were joined by a group of eight adult AMERICAN GOLDEN-PLOVERS in various stages of transitional plumage, all with at least some black on the underparts. At one point, a flock of an additional 26 golden-plovers flew over us heading towards the Mucklands to the NE. We did not see this group on the ground, and the original eight were still there after the flew over. --One of the most notable aspects of the walk for me was the density of WHITE-RUMPED SANDPIPERS in the peep flocks on the flats, especially towards the northwest corner where the flocks were densest. I estimated at least 55 White-rumped, with 20+ visible in a single section of the flock at one time. Most of these birds seemed to be transitional adults but I though I might have seen a couple of juveniles as well. BAIRD'S SANDPIPERS were markedly less common, but I saw probably eight or more eventually, some good looks in with the peep flocks at the NW corner, but at higher density in one of the drier channels a bit south of the NW corner. STILT SANDPIPERS were scarce, with two cooperative juveniles near the dike and a single mostly basic adult near the NW corner. The juvenile WILSON'S PHALAROPE was difficult to pick out from the middle of the dike but we eventually got nice views of it running along the shoreline in the middle of the peep flocks. Two adult and one juvenile SANDERLING and two juvenile and one bright adult RUDDY TURNSTONES were nice additions as well. Full eBird list with my estimates of numbers here: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S19626820 Finally, Tim Lenz found four BLACK TERNS flying around the south end of Cayuga Lake yesterday afternoon, and it sounds like at least two SANDERLINGS were present on the spit at Myers Point yesterday as well. -- Jay McGowan Macaulay Library Cornell Lab of Ornithology [email protected] -- 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/[email protected]/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/ --
