Late Saturday morning, my son Tilden and I made a short birding outing in Lansing. Along Burdick Hill Road, we had long, frame-filling scope views of an adult female light-morph ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK perching on one of the short spruces near the house on the corner of North Triphammer Road. A minute later and a few hundred meters to the west, we watched in surprise as a female NORTHERN HARRIER flew right at a Red-tailed Hawk (one of at least four along the road), forced it to the ground, and then lifted off again and cruised the fields.
Our luck with raptors continued at Ladoga Park Road, where we saw a BALD EAGLE, past its third year but not quite an adult, feasting on a bloody duck carcass. Immense numbers of surviving waterfowl abided on the water nearby - many of all of our common Aythya species (CANVASBACKS especially abundant - I don't think I'd ever before seen so many on the southern half of the lake), one elusive LONG-TAILED DUCK, some COMMON GOLDENEYES, some flyby BUFFLEHEADS, a few HORNED GREBES, and some Mallards. I was sure I saw one a CACKLING GOOSE in among the hundreds of Canada Geese, but I didn't manage to show it to Tilden or to refind it definitively. Birds were much less abundant and diverse at the marina and off Myers Park. Mark Chao --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com -- 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/ --
