I covered Area 1 of the Wilson-Lake Plains Christmas Bird Count (Niagara County) on Saturday (Wilson Harbor and Wilson-Tuscarora State Park), as well as lakewatching for the first 2 1/2 hours with Willie D'Anna near his and Betsy Potter's house. Diversity was excellent (61 species), especially at the lake, but nothing extraordinarily rare. Highlights are below - a full list and summary can be found at the Lakeshore Nature Tours Facebook Page.
Lesser Scaup - 8 Greater Scaup - 33 Ring-necked Duck - 7 Redhead - 132 White-winged Scoter - 146 Black Scoter - 3 Surf Scoter - 1 Long-tailed Duck - 306 Common Goldeneye - 143 Bufflehead - 16 Red-breasted Merganser - 442 Common Merganser - 4 Hooded Merganser - 12 Common Loon - 20 Red-throated Loon - 117 (high count) Red-necked Grebe - 30 (high count) Horned Grebe - 1 Bonaparte's Gull - 1019 (extremely high count) Iceland Gull - 1 adult Glaucous Gull - 1 1st winter Northern Harrier - 2 Peregrine Falcon - 1 juvenile Great Horned Owl - 1 Wild Turkey - 4 Belted Kingfisher - 1 Brown Creeper - 1 Carolina Wren - 2 Winter Wren - 1 American Tree Sparrow - 6 Song Sparrow - 1 White-throated Sparrow - 4 Common Redpoll - 1 Pine Siskin - 11 Brett Lakeshore Nature Tours 716-628-8226 bmew...@lakeshorenaturetours.com www.LakeshoreNatureTours.com Like us on Facebook! -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --