Hi all, As I had worked almost 18 hours of Tuesday and 10 hours on Wednesday at work, I decided to leave half an hour early yesterday to catch evening glory at Montezuma.
Goal for the day was to get some blackbird flocks against blue skies. I arrived around 4.30 PM to East Road. Saw a few Snow Geese in mucklands, so I headed there. At the junction of 31 and 89, there were already lots of cars pulled out and everyone seemed to be a photographer, I did not recognize anyone as "local birders". Snow Geese were fairly close to the road feeding in the potato fields. Somehow it looked like that they could distinguish between a camera and gun, they were not so worried about us being some 200 ft from them. If people walked they got a little worried and stood up and watched otherwise continued feeding. I followed several individuals to record their behaviors. The birds that were feeding in the muck had very dirty mucky legs and beaks, in some case up to their eyes. Quite a few years ago before MNWR acquired this land, with permission from the potato field owners who were working in the area, we had walked in the muck to look for Buff-breasted Sandpipers and it took months to wash off black muck from sneakers. One of the snow geese was tugging hard at a stubborn root, as a result Newton's third law "Actions and reactions are equal in magnitude, but opposite in direction" kicked in and goose with the opposite direction force almost hit the ground! It probably had some aftershock. At some point all goose took to air. One of the visitor called out to me, to point an immature BALD EAGLE circling. That made the geese land on the far side of the mucklands. Then I spent some time watching Pintails at the Seneca river end. I also came across a big flock of blackbirds and there were quite a few RUSTY BLACKBIRDS mixed in and I could hear their "kush kush li, kushleee". Then I headed back to May's and North Spring Pool. Here I did watch incredible numbers of blackbirds heading into marsh for the night. Waves after waves of birds came, some small, some large and some continuous, when they flew overhead there was huge "swoosh'" sound of wings mixed in with chuckles and chucks of Grackle and Red-winged calls. They kept coming for more than half an hour. I even could get them passing in front of rising moon in the east. In the west sky was incredibly beautiful and pink and tons of other species coming to roost from that directions too. In this huge expanse of blackbirds, gulls and geese, there was one TREE SWALLOW heading to marsh. I was wondering if he is feeling all alone and lost! Little brave soul! As the sunset and moon rose and was almost dark, I saw bird sitting on a dead stump, I was thinking it could be an owl, but I think it was a REDTAIL, but looked quite eerie in the moonlight. I wished I could spend the whole night there and be there early morning to witness the return flights, but alas there is no way to camp there. It is too much to drive home and come back again early morning! It was an incredibly beautiful evening! Meena PS: I just saw a flock of TVs from right in the corner above new Vet school building. While at the bus stop my neighbor's robin was signing his attracting female type of song and soon a female flew in and he followed her around for a few minutes and then was back on his perch to sing. My robin is yet to show up! I hope to put some video clips on YouTube sometime this week-end. Meena Haribal Ithaca NY 14850 http://haribal.org/ http://meenaharibal.blogspot.com/ -- 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 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
