I spent a couple hours (3-5pm) at Stewart Park, mainly scoping the lake & jetties from the swan pond, wondering if any Cattle Egrets would venture there with the gulls. I guess I didn't stay late enough or beat the bushes along the lakeshore enough because I found none, nor did I find any among the gulls at Treman Marina afterward.
What I did find was: * a/the GREAT EGRET on the white lighthouse jetty among the gulls (who gave it a respectful distance) until an adult BALD EAGLE flew fairly high overhead, and the egret & gulls took flight. I saw the egret a couple times in flight, the last time going east, but I didn't see it along the shoreline later. * at least 5 PIED-BILLED GREBES earlier in the SE corner of the lake, one of which still had some juvenile striping on the face. I met Gary Kohlenberg who I think tallied more. Yesterday there was a group of 9. * a female RUDDY DUCK flew out to the lake, apparently from the mouth of Fall Creek, and alit not far from the swan pond, a first-of-season for both Gary & myself * a small flock of AMERICAN COOTS off the swan pond which in recent days has grown from 2 (Sunday) to 5 (yesterday) to 9 (today) * before Gary's arrival, while scanning the skies over the east side of the valley in Lansing I found a long-winged, long-tailed raptor flying into the wind, occasionally pausing with a dihedral, and showing white at the base of the tail. It turned out to be my first-of-season ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK, a light morph, and it proceeded to fly west across Cayuga Lake, affording nice scope views of the underwing and tail patterns. --Dave Nutter -- 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/ --
