Michele Tarsa and I did the annual DEC waterfowl/eagle count along the Greene County side of the Hudson River yesterday, January 19th, 2019
We covered the river from the Coeymans Landing in southern Albany County to the south end of Catskill by the Ulster County line. We did a short excursion down to West Camp and Saugerties, Ulster County, just to see what was around in the sunny south (not much). The conditions were favorable in that without snow cover, we were able to access many of the good viewing points. The temperature was in the mid-20s all day with little wind (but for the occasional bone-chilling blasts of cold north winds) and a fair amount of open water on the mostly frozen river. But the waterfowl were not that exciting - lots of Canada Geese, a few mergansers, surprising group of swans (yeah, Mute Swans) and that's it. The geese were kinda hard to tally without duplicating the counts as they were often shuffling around from one loafing spot to another, or being chased up by passing river traffic. But I believe the numbers are representative for the time observed. I'm sure there were many other thousands feeding in cornfields away from the river. Here's the tally: Mute Swan 10; Canada Goose 2,090 Common Merganser 51. Plus, we had a Belted Kingfisher fly up from an open stream in Catskill. In Ulster County, there were about 110 Mallards, Amer. Black Duck and a Great Blue Heron on the Esopus Creek in Saugerties. (We didn't include those latter ones in our report since they were out of our territory.) Sticking to our mission, we tallied a total of 11 Bald Eagles, including a copulating pair near a known nest site. The real highlight was watching a Merlin take off from a treetop perch and snag a small songbird right out of the air. Fortunately, the Merlin came back to the same perch to enjoy its bounty - which as it turns out was a rather unfortunate House Sparrow. All that took place in the trees around a sports complex in Saugerties. Interesting backyard birds for those in an apartment complex in Ravena were a pair of C. Ravens and a Black Vulture. Apparently they have been taking advantage of the feeder generosity of the residents there. There were none of the expected ducks though. I thought I could count on the usual 100 or so well-fed Mallards that hang around the small patch of open water in the otherwise frozen decorative ponds there. Rich Guthrie New Baltimore The Greene County New York -- Richard Guthrie -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
