Hi birders, I am working on a research project with Dr. David Winkler on the foraging habits of tree swallows during cold snaps. Like us, many of you who bird around Ithaca have probably observed large foraging aggregations of swallows in places like the Cayuga Lake inlet, Myers Point/Salmon Creek, and Dryden Lake during cool, cloudy weather (like today). We're interested in getting samples of tree swallow food from places where swallows feed most intensively in this kind of weather to assess just how important these foraging habitats may be to the local population of breeding swallows throughout the breeding season.
To better target our sampling of food sources, we'd really benefit from your help! If you are near a place in the southern part of the lake basin where you observe (or have observed) a large flock of swallows, we'd love to know about it (where were you? when was it? were swalllows feeding on the wing or resting in trees/wires?). We'll certainly be using eBird data, so we'd especially love to know about sightings that would not otherwise have ended up in the eBird database. Thanks for your time in reading this request and, in advance, for any help you can offer. Good birding! Chris Dalton Ithaca, NY christopher.m.dalton AT gmail.com -- 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/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/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/ --
