Before the rain started in earnest mid afternoon, I managed to get in 6 hours of birding at several south shore (Suffolk Co.) locations. A bit before noon I was on my way down Great River Road, heading for Timberpoint C.C., when I passed a small town park that allows access to the west shore of the Connetquot River. I saw a Large concentration of waterfowl on the river, so I turned around to check it out. After scoping up and down the river 3 times I came up with a count of ~1000 diving ducks, with the following species breakdown:
~80-85% LESSER SCAUP ~10% Bufflehead ~5% Greater Scaup ~1-5% Ruddy Duck This was by far the highest number of Lesser Scaup I've ever seen in one place. I would assume this gathering was a northbound flock using the river as a stopover point. It doesn't come close to the size of wintering Greater Scaup flocks I've seen, (10s of thousands) but was still very impressive. Earlier visits to Robert Moses and Captree state parks, and subsequent visits to Timberpoint C.C., Heckscher S.P., and Bayard Cutting Arboretum turned up little of note beyond a modest movement of all 3 scoter species and some N. Gannets (mostly west-east) off Robert Moses field 5, and 4 OYSTERCATCHERS on the marsh across the boat channel at Captree. -- 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/ --
