That's terrible. I can remember going with Jill to Stewart Park, which wasn't far from where we lived at the time on Lake St., and counting the Cormorants in that tree. Many times there were over 50 Cormorants in that tree.
The only things close to it I've ever seen were a tree on the Great Salt Lake in Utah in 2005 that had over a dozen Bald Eagles perched in it and a tree in western Minnesota that was in the breeding block I was helping to survey this past sping. This tree had several Cormorants in it, including some pairs that were building nests. We watched one pair try to play handoff with some stills, but the recipient of the sticks "fumbled" them. I also did see once a Red-tailed Hawk perched in the middle of a tree and surrounding him were MANY Great-tailed Grackles. This was in a tree across the street from Mitchell Lake in San Antonio, Texas. Richard Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:00:32 -0400 Subject: [cayugabirds-l] Stewart Park 29Sep11 - waterfowl, tragedy From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Livia and I checked Stewart Park at lunch today. Although it was raining steadily, the lake was very calm and ducks were easy to see around the weed mats towards the east end of the park. We didn't find anything that hasn't been around for a while, but did see the continuing male GREATER SCAUP, 2 female RING-NECKED DUCKS, female RUDDY DUCK, 3 AMERICAN WIGEON, Hooded Merganser, AMERICAN COOT, at least 5 Pied-billed Grebes, multiple American Black Ducks, and tons of Mallards. A MERLIN was perched on the dead tree on the swan pen island, an adult BALD EAGLE was in a small dead snag along the shore of the swan pen, and an immature BALD EAGLE flew by out of jetty woods. The most notable sighting, however, was the fact that the famous large snag across the channel from the boat house (the cormorant/osprey/eagle/Merlin/Peregrine tree) is GONE. I haven't been to Stewart Park for a few days, so I don't know when this happened, and I also couldn't tell WHAT exactly happened. It looks like it might be broken at the base, so perhaps it finally fell over from natural causes and was cleared away to keep the channel open. I would be interested to know if anyone has more information about this. In any case, I consider this a huge loss to the birding community. It will be missed. -- Jay McGowan Macaulay Library Cornell Lab of Ornithology [email protected] -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: Welcome and Basics Rules and Information Subscribe, Configuration and Leave Archives: The Mail Archive Surfbirds BirdingOnThe.Net Please submit your observations to 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/[email protected]/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/ --
