Bob, I have always understood that the divide between the Susquehanna and St. Lawrence basins (The Cayuga Lake Basin is part of the St. Lawrence drainage) was "somewhere between Belle School Rd and Ridgeway Road."
So, you have forced me to actually look at the maps. Check out this link: http://www.tompkins-co.org/gis/physical.html Here you can download the following: (1) Town of Caroline--Tompkins County (the physical map) Then scroll down to Environmental Maps and download: (2) Watersheds of Tompkins County (3) Danby Watershed The most useful comparison is then to look at the Danby map vs the Town of Caroline, where you can see from the Danby map that they draw the divide mostly right along Belle School Road. Right around the road there it is quite flat and there is marsh on both sides. It is probably hard to tell exactly what water flows which way right there without testing it. You can see, however, that the watershed line (pink) bows away from the road on the south side in one spot fairly close to White Church Rd. The catbird was sitting in a bush along the road right about where that bows out (I am not making this up), so I think we're safe to say that when we saw it, it was in the basin!! The Towhee was on the north side of Belle School Road, right where the blue dotted line goes under the road (a culvert)--so definitely at least a few feet into the basin!! That stream definitely flows north between Coddington and White Church, and there is detectable flow at least 300' in, and probably sooner, but I can't remember seeing whether water flows under the road in one direction or the other. The Field Sparrows were farther in, so not even debatable. Enjoy, Sandy At 10:21 AM 1/2/2015, bob mcguire wrote: >Congratulations to Bill Podulka & friends for finding Catbird, >Towhee, and Field Sparrow on (?) Belle School Rd for the Christmas >count. Dave Nutter raised the question of whether they are in or out >of the Cayuga Lake basin (for the few of us who really care!) >Looking at the aerial photo on Google maps, I'd say that the road >itself IS the boundary. So, depending on exactly the birds were >seen, they could be in or out. BIll, can you add anything here? > >Bob McGuire >-- > >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/ > >-- -- 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/ --
