Susie & I stopped at the Knox-Marsellus marsh on East Rd in Montezuma this afternoon. We were returning from Fair Haven where Susie got a lot of great photos of TURKEY VULTURE tracks (hard to find) on the sandy beach where they had been eating dead fish. At K-M marsh we found 17 SANDHILL CRANES. There was a loose group of 9 (7 confirmed adults; 2 faced consistently away and had their heads buried in vegetation when they weren't); a clearly separate group of 5 adults; and a family of 3. One of the 3 was a JUVENILE. While the juveniles can fly well now, the adults usually don't yet take them far from the area where they were raised. I'm confident this youngster is a product of the Montezuma system for this year.
On a lighter note, Susie has been a scoffer as regards CACKLING GEESE. There were a lot of CANADA GEESE at the marsh and she challenged me to find a CACKLER. I did. I gave her a scope view full of geese and asked her to pick out her nemesis, which she quickly did. She was actually sort of excited. Steve & Susie Fast Brooktondale -- 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/ --
