Betsy Potter and I led the Lake Ontario Plain field trip for the Buffalo Ornithological Society today. This trip explores the region near Lake Ontario in eastern Niagara and western Orleans Counties. At our last scheduled stop before returning to the meeting place to disband (around 3:00), we found a BARNACLE GOOSE! This bird was in the field that held a White-fronted Goose and 79 Cackling Geese earlier this month. The field is in the southwest quadrant of Somerset-Hartland Townline Road and Johnson Creek Road in the Town of Hartland, Niagara County. Today, there were still a lot of Canada Geese here (viewed from Johnson Creek Road) and a few hundred NORTHERN PINTAIL, as well as numbers of GREEN-WINGED TEAL, BLACK DUCKS, AMERICAN WIGEONS, and MALLARDS. Besides the Barnacle Goose, there was also a Canada Goose-domestic hybrid. The Barnacle Goose appeared to be unbanded, although heat distortion made confirming this difficult.
The location is roughly ten miles as the goose flies northeast of Ring-necked Marsh at Iroquois NWR, where the Barnacle Goose was seen last week. As far as I am aware, there have been no reports of the Iroquois Barnacle Goose since last Sunday. It will be interesting to hear if that bird was seen today. Although I do not think the geese need to range that far from Ring-necked Marsh to find food (corn stubble fields are ubiquitous), perhaps the Iroquois bird and the Canada Geese it hangs out with have pushed just a little further north in preparation for their eventual trip to northern breeding grounds. Or, perhaps this is another bird. By the way, before this spring, the last Barnacle Goose sighting that I recall in the Region was roughly ten years ago in the Iroquois area, so they are very infrequent here. Good birding! Willie ---------------- Willie D'Anna Betsy Potter Wilson, NY dannapotterATroadrunner.com http://www.betsypottersart.com -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
