This morning I drove several roads in Lansing, looking for open country birds. Highlights were on Buck Rd: at #648, west of Van Nostrand Rd., I was surprised to see a YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER hanging on a frozen apple in the crown of a heavily laden tree -- it eventually dropped off and flew in bounding flight over my head into the woods on the south side of the road. A little further along, near corner with Cobb St. a large flock of AM TREE SPARROWS was in a weedy field, with birds teed up on the frozen seed heads -- on a single scan I counted 160 sparrows. Among them was a single immature WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW, and several JUNCOS. Later on Cobb St., just south of Buck, a farmer was spreading that wonderful manure on the snow field, and there were about 200 SNOW BUNTINGS, 40 HORNED LARKS, and a single LAPLAND LONGSPUR.
It was quite birdy throughout that area, with hundreds of CEDAR WAXWINGS in trees far to the north of East Lansing Rd., several COM RAVENS flying about calling and a nice dark-morph ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK. (if anyone has a reliable shrike close to Ithaca, please let me know) KEN Ken Rosenberg Conservation Science Program Cornell Lab of Ornithology 607-254-2412 607-342-4594 (cell) k...@cornell.edu<mailto:k...@cornell.edu> -- 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/ --
