Yesterday morning I biked to through the mist to Stewart Park on the Cayuga Waterfront Trail, assiduously inputting every ID into eBird as I went. Passing between the TCAT bus garage and Newman Golf Course on Pier Rd, I heard something odd, a bit of jumbled rattle, perhaps a distant Gray Catbird. I paused to listen. It turned out the sound was not far away, it was close, but quiet. At the edge of the golf course, a few feet from where I had stopped, was a small ditch, home to some dead cattails. I could have stretched my hands from one side of the marsh to the other, and it was only 40 or 50 feet long, with vast clipped green lawns on 3 sides. My side had pavement, a bike path along a road. But in that cattail patch I heard a subdued Marsh Wren, a species which is common in Montezuma, but unusual in Tompkins County. I edged closer, and without any further prompting the bird poked its head up and briefly scanned me. I imagined its consternation, ending a night of migration by descending into fog, desperately searching for - then happily finding - some marsh, but as the day brightened discovering that the extent of the marsh was so limited. And then humans started coming by, so close! Marsh Wrens seem pretty good at hunkering down, but I bet this one looked forward to finding a bigger piece of habitat.
- - 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/ --
