fyi Marcie ________________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] on behalf of Nicholas Sly [[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2011 11:24 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [GeneseeBirds-L] Razorbill's Demise and other Niagara sightings
I had a great day on the Canadian side of the Niagara River today, with a group of Cayuga Bird Club (Ithaca area) birders. Our gull sightings largely mirrored Willie's for the day, with a group total of 12 species (I had 11). I'm mostly writing to provide details for what I believe is the death of the Razorbill that has been offshore from Ft Niagara for the past several weeks. We arrived at Niagara-on-the-Lake in late morning (after 9am I believe?) and started scanning the river mouth for the Razorbill with no luck. After some time, I was looking at some grebes not far off the point from Ft. Niagara and I saw chunky black and white bird floating low on the water. Based on the overall size, color, shape, and proportions, my immediate call was "Razorbill!!!", but it seemed off. It had its head down underwater, like snorkeling loons do looking for fish. We waited for its head to come up, and waited, and waited. Then I realized it was just bobbing around on the water with no control. There was some debate as to what kind of dead bird it was, or whether it was actually a broken decoy or even just trash. Later on, the body drifted inshore, outside the edges of the main river current. It drifted upriver, following pretty close to the base of the Fort Niagara walls, and eventually got caught in the little eddy between the Fort wall and the wall where the Coast Guard Station juts out into the river. Now that it was much closer, I studied it for a long time at full zoom and grew increasingly more confident of the ID as a dead Razorbill. Until it got caught in the corner, it mostly showed the same side to us and I think it was partially leaning away, leading to some confusion. Once it got in the eddy, and some fishing boats went by close, I watched it spin slowly a few times and saw it from all sides. The back of the head/neck, back, and tail (top and bottom) were jet black, although the back color was only clearly visible from certain angles as it was listing a little to one side and the side and flank feathers were kind of disheveled and fluffed up. The undertail coverts were clean white. The cheek area was white, and separated from the visible white underparts by black that came down the side of the neck or upper breast to the water. At one point it drifted right past a Coot, and the dead bird was a bit larger and bulkier, appropriate for Razorbill but not Bufflehead, another possible ID mentioned. Although this may not seem conclusive and a lot of people were hedging on the ID, I don't see what else it could be. I'm convinced that it was the Razorbill. I'd love to be proven wrong. Also, while we were viewing the drifting bird, we noticed birders over in the Fort who did not appear to see the drifting bird right below them. If you're out there - what did you see? If anyone is birding the Fort Niagara side of the river tomorrow, I'd be really interested to know if you can find anything washed ashore, especially in the short section between the coast guard station and the lake. Retrieval might be possible. As far as other bird sightings go, our list as mentioned largely mirrored Willie's: Queenston Boat Ramp At least one member of our group had a Little Gull flying out of view downriver Adam Beck ~ 4 Iceland Gull adults, with a full range of variation from nearly pure white wingtips to heavy dark gray 1 continuing first-winter Franklin's Gull ~ 2 likely Thayer's, a first-winter and an adult Control Gates SLATY-BACKED GULL Lesser Black-backed Gull 2 female Harlequin Ducks 1 Red-throated Loon very, very far upriver on the Canadian half near the loose Goldeneye and Bufflehead rafts The rocks just above the falls two 1st or 2nd winter Glaucous Gulls, plus several Lesser Black-backed Gulls Whirlpool Right at the end of the day we tried for the 1st winter Black-legged Kittiwake from the cable car viewing platform. All the Bonapartes had already cleared out for the night, and all of five individual gulls were still present - four Ring-billed Gulls and the Kittiwake, flying around quite a bit right below the overlook offering superb views. Good Birding, Nick Sly _______________________________________________ GeneseeBirds-L mailing list - [email protected] http://mail.geneseo.edu/mailman/listinfo/geneseebirds-l _______________________________________________ ONTBIRDS is presented by the Ontario Field Ornithologists - the provincial birding organization. Send bird reports to [email protected] For information about ONTBIRDS visit http://www.ofo.ca/
