This morning a couple minutes after 8am I had just dropped off a customer in Varna and was driving back toward town on NYS 366, when I first saw one TURKEY VULTURE fly north across the road, then a RED-TAILED HAWK fly south, then I noticed 2 more TURKEY VULTURES apparently just starting to move out from trees in Hillside Acres trailer park. As I began to ascend the hill I was surprised to see a V of about 60 small, dark, fast-flapping geese, not very high under a low cloud ceiling and headed northwest, more or less following the south rim of the valley of Fall Creek. I continued on NYS 366 and turned off on Caldwell Road, pulling over between the Vet School and the greenhouses to get another look at what I thought was the same flock moving away from me to the northwest, but now it was in more of an irregular mob and appeared to have about 80 birds. From Caldwell Road I took Plantations Road to the end and briefly scanned Beebe Lake, only finding CANADA GEESE and MALLARDS. My next pick-up was on NYS 34B north of Myers, so I rationalized dropping all the way down to East Shore Drive. There I found what I expected, a tight flock of BRANT in the middle of the lake north of the piling cluster. I called Bob who I figured would be out looking for them. He said he'd just left Stewart Park without Brant which verified that they'd just arrived. I had another look in the scope and counted about 100. Then I pecked out my message to Cayugabirds-L. When I looked up, they were gone. I called Bob back to warn him, but he had to hang up because he'd just found them in distant flight. A minute later he called back with a count of 130. But his high count at the marina was 190, which comports well with what Tom & Mark saw. I suspect my Varna flock joined Ryan's Northwoods & Tower Road flocks to form my lake flock, then they flew around gathering more stray groups. I wonder what they were doing so dispersed at 8am. Had they spent the night on the lake or a pond and taken off to migrate at dawn to be turned back by the weather, or was it just breakfast time? --Dave Nutter
On Friday, October 23, 2009, at 05:21AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > 100 brant off east shore pk 0815 23 oct -dave nutter > >-- > >Cayugabirds-L List Info: >http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME >http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES > >Archives: >1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html >2) 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 Archives: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
