Yesterday around 7pm, I saw three sandpipers on the rocky shore of Fall Creek near the Cascadilla Boat house. I think they were juvenile Spotted Sandpipers: bobbing tails, pink/orange bills with a dark tip on the bill, thrush-like markings on the upper breast, soft peeping calls, flew off toward Jetty Woods. Last year, they hung out on the jetty where the concrete pebbles are loose.
After that, I watched the 154+ cormorants settling in for the night on the top of the sycamores over at Jetty woods; I couldn't help but be curious how a handful of them would suddenly leave their roost, bolting upstream high above the creek, and then make a sharp u-turn near the bridges, and then glide back to the roost. Then another handful would leave and do the same thing. This went on for about twenty minutes, and I wondered if it was just juveniles who did this; but then all of a sudden, the entire tree load of cormorants (about 116, leaving the dead one which is still in the tree) took off and did the exact same thing as the previous cormorants. It seemed to me that they were enjoying the fun of flying as fast as they could with the wind (upstream) and then gliding back on the wind. I couldn't help by see how much that was a bit like the fun that can be had when kayaking white water, but in reverse: paddle as hard as you can against the current, then make a sharp u-turn, and go as fast as you can with the current. Or even a bike: peddle hard up a long windy road, then coast as fast as you can down the other side. -- 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/ --
