We travelled upstate on Saturday, February 27th from Long Island and headed for Rouses Point to search for the Ivory Gull. Fortunately, the Ivory Gull was on the ice south of the Stoney Point Road breakwater at about 1:00PM. A nasty snow squall came up the lake and sent us to Prospect Street in Champlain for the N. Hawk Owl - no luck. We headed down to Ausable Pt. and came upon some birders scoping a large mixed flock of Scaup and Common Goldeneye. They quickly put us on the Tufted Duck (Thanks Brian!).
We spent the night in Saranac Lake leaving early Sunday morning, February 28th for Lake Champlain. On the way we stopped in Bloomingdale where we found Pine Siskin (10) and Purple Finch (2) on Oregon Plains Road and Evening Grosbeak (8) and Purple Finch (3) at a feeder on Swinyer Road. At Champlain at about 9:00AM we quickly found a Northern Shrike (the bird was singing!) on the NE corner of Gamlaw (sp.?) Road and Prospect St. About 9:30AM some crows alerted us to the presence of the Northern Hawk Owl behind 494 Prospect St. We viewed the bird through a heavy snowfall for a short while before the crows chased the bird below the tree and shrub border - we did not see the owl again. Further north up Gamlaw Road were Cedar Waxwings (10) and a Sharp-shinned Hawk. We headed back to Rouses Pt. to see if we could get a better look at the Ivory Gull. Unfortunately, it was not being seen at the time (about 10:30AM). On Monday morning, March 1st we headed over to Westport to the boat launch ramp, where, among the many Ring-billed Gulls was an immature Iceland Gull and an adult Lesser Black-backed Gull. We drove the "magic triangle" north of Westport, but other than a flock of twenty Cedar Waxwings, things were pretty quiet. A good two days of birding were made possible by the valuable information passed among the various groups of birders in the area. Ken & Sue Feustel -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/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/ --
