Eight people joined Ken and me for a half-day field trip to look for birds on the lake and in the fields of Lansing. It was a gorgeous day! So different from our windy and freezing scouting day. Today the sky was blue, the light was excellent, and temperature rose into the upper 50’s by the end of the trip!
We started out at East Shore Park, where we mostly observed Common Mergansers and Common Goldeneye. Looking across the lake, we saw that most of the ducks were concentrated on the west side. We were glad that we had asked permission from Elaina M. to bring the group to her property overlooking the southwest corner of the lake. This is where thousands of Aythya had spread out. The ducks glowed in the sunlight; in addition to the huge numbers of Redheads, we saw many handsome Canvasbacks, lesser numbers of both Greater and Lesser Scaup, and a few scattered Ring-necked Ducks. Closer to shore we saw a single American Wigeon among the Mallards and Black Ducks. John Confer spotted a distant male Long-tailed Duck, that all of us were able to see between its diving disappearances. A young Bald Eagle was at the ice edge. When it flew up, a wave of ducks rose off the lake with a machine-like hum of flapping wings and swirled in the sky in front of us. So many birds in the sky at once! But none of them resolved into the Tufted Duck that was reported on the lake this week. We next went to Myers Point, Salt Point and Ladoga. While the lake was not too rough at Myers, there also weren’t many birds to see beyond the usual gulls, Mallards and Common Mergansers. We could see a pair of White-winged Scoters closer to Salt Point, and moved to that area for better viewing. The scoters were actively diving, but everyone got excellent looks, as they were fairly close in. The male’s white eye mark and bright orange bill stood out sharply in the sunlight. John spotted a lovely male Wood Duck here as well, which swam to shore and hunkered down among the Canada Geese. Common Goldeneye were doing their head thrust displays. We also saw a male Hooded Merganser. Over at Ladoga, we added American Coots and a couple of Double-crested Cormorants to our list. We drove out Lansingville Road to look for field birds—and found them! We stopped for a small flock of Horned Larks, and then a larger flock of more than 60 Snow Buntings flew up in the same general area. We scoped these birds for a while, which unfortunately were not very close, but we found no Longspurs. On Fenner Road, we heard more Horned Larks, and spent some time trying to get better views of a couple of sparrows that were hiding in the ditch. Ken saw that one was a Savannah Sparrow, but no one else got a good view. The other bird appeared to be a Song Sparrow. On our way back along route 34B, we had a Rough-legged Hawk flying overhead. This was a very enjoyable trip with a great group of people on a beautiful day! -- 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/ --
