I walked at the Durland Preserve for a little while this morning. The highlight was probably FOX SPARROWS. I estimated at least a dozen, outnumbering all other sparrows, giving their high-pitched tseep calls from almost every hedgerow. At least four different birds were singing too! Also a flock of 200+ Cedar Waxwings and a flyover GREATER YELLOWLEGS.
Then I heard from Tim Lenz he had seen a flock of Black Scoters fly past Myers, so I dropped down to East Shore Park just in time to see a group of ~50 BLACK SCOTERS (could have been other birds in their as well but the majority were Blacks) wheel a bit north of East Shore and head back up the lake. Two WHITE-WINGED SCOTERS followed a few minutes later, lower to the water. Tim said he had Brant and Long-tailed Duck at Myers as well. Yesterday morning I started at Myers, where a group of six (5m1f) LONG-TAILED DUCKS flew by several times. A few scaup, Ring-necked Ducks, Green-winged Teal, and Northern Pintail also flew by, and a small flock of Common, Hooded, and Red-breasted mergansers landed in the creek. >From there I continued up the lake. Aurora Bay was full of loons but not too much else. From Harris Park I had my first-of-the-fall Horned Grebes and White-winged Scoters. I skipped Montezuma for the time being (probably should have given the main drive a check first, but oh well) and took a long, damp walk at the Seneca Meadows Preserve. I was looking particularly for Nelson's Sparrows, which I have looked for before here without success but which Chris and Jessie were fortunate enough to find on Sunday. Despite a lot of searching I was still unsuccessful with this, but I saw plenty of other cool birds, including dozens of Song, Swamp, Savannah, White-throated, and White-crowned sparrows and several Field and AMERICAN TREE sparrows (the latter of which I saw in many locations subsequently); hundreds of Mallards and Green-winged Teal flying out of the ponds; 40+ Wilson's Snipe, 50+ Killdeer, 3 Pectoral Sandpipers, and a few of each yellowlegs in the muddy edges of the first two ponds; and a Yellow Palm Warbler along the woods edge. Also heard some strange sounds coming from the marsh nearest the oak tree that I tried to convince myself were coming from a Purple Gallinule, but I was never able to get any kind of confirmation. Finally making it to Montezuma I found the goose bonanza I posted about before. 150+ Brant on the wildlife drive that were joined by a group of 9 CACKLING GEESE that flew in all together. I was first alerted to them by their calls while they were still some distance away, very nasal and high pitched honking. Knox-Marsellus was good as well, with the aforementioned ROSS'S GEESE sitting with a ridiculously small group of Snow Geese (6:1, one of the lowest Snow:Ross's ratios I've ever seen around here!) All the white geese flew away at about 4:50PM, and as I stood on the tower at Tschache at 5:05, the same group of Snow and Ross's flew right over my head, but Anthony Collerton tells me that the group returned to Knox-Marsellus about an hour later, with a few more Snow Geese in tow. Also of note at Knox-Marsellus were 170 BRANT, which appeared between 3:40 and 4:05PM, as they were note there when I first arrived. I thought they might be the same group from the Wildlife Drive, but I talked to Dave Kennedy a while later, and he said he had just seen the Wildlife Drive group, so apparently they were different (although when I check the Wildlife Drive at 5:20, those Brant were gone, so I'm all confused.) Anyway, one thing IS clear, I was unable to find ANY Greater White-fronted Geese, quashing my hopes of a six-goose day that I have hoped for for some time. Other birds around Montezuma included Pectoral Sandpipers and both yellowlegs on the drive, Black-bellied Plover and American Golden-Plover flyovers at Towpath, but NO other shorebirds (Puddlers was all but deserted). Unfortunate considering we had 11 species on Saturday (without White-rumped or LB Dowitcher, two of the most likely lingerers). A huge flock of ~250 American Pipits was at Knox-Marsellus, and a group of ~35 Snow Buntings on the Wildlife Drive. Good birding, -Jay -- Jay McGowan Macaulay Library Cornell Lab of Ornithology [email protected] -- 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/ --
