Hi all, Today I did a trip to Knox-Marsellus and was hoping to go to Van Dyne Spoor road with hopes of seeing a Western Kingbird. But ended up spending most of the 3.5 hours at Knox-Marsellus.
I was looking at shorebirds trying to pick out rarities and identify the common ones. Then I saw a Peregrine sitting on the edge of the one of the fingers (land that jut out like fingers). It took off and started chasing an immature Bald Eagle. It circled in opposite direction to the Bald Eagle most of the time and attacked the eagle from the back. several time eagle turned around to face the peregrine by doing a back flip. One turn around was really awesome feat as the peregrine was very close. It was like a slow motion thriller movie. It continued and the second Bald Eagle joined the circling one, Often the two of them clashed claws in the air while the peregrine was continuing the chase. In between the peregrine tried to attack a flying Great Blue Heron. I initially thought that the Bald eagle had something in its talon and that is why both Peregrine and the other eagle were after it. But it turned out that it had nothing and the peregrine even tried attacking the second Bald Eagle. The movie went one for at least 15 Minutes or may be more. At one point I thought eagle was tired and it was going slowly and the peregrine was gaining on it from back in a direct line. Finally the eagles went out at a tangent and let the peregrine circle. After this peregrine headed down to a finger and on the way made pass at two of the Great Blue Herons. So I was wondering at the falcon what was it thinking, I continued watching the peregrine. Now the scene had changed and I saw a Great Blue Heron land close to the falcon, may be about 10 feet or so directly looking at the falcon. Slowly it started approaching the falcon directly. Once it watched the falcon as the crows do, from one side. When it was about 5 feet away, the Great Blue heron opened his both wings wide and thrust his head forward, a threatening posture. He might have said a word or two but I could not hear him as I was half a mile away from him. Mean while falcon acted as if it did not care and looked away from him. Then the Great Blue Heron seemed to have moved to the back of the falcon and was ready to mount an assault when the flacon flew away. That is when I noticed three more herons also had moved forward for a concerted effort in teaching falcon a lesson. To much to his annoyance the falcon had landed near the group of another flock of Great Blue Herons. These GBH also behaved in a similar fashion as the previous ones, four of them headed towards the falcon and chased him away in next five minutes. Falcon took off and headed towards a tree where there was another Bald Eagle sitting. But a few seconds later I lost him. I think I watched the flacon for more than 45 minutes and all the observations were through the scope. When I was following the fight with eagles, my hands got cramp as I was continuously moving the scope to follow the falcon . That was worth visiting the Knox-Marsellus, but wait there were some more other interesting things also going on. I scanned for the shorebirds previously except for three SLIT SANDPIPERS, I had seen mostly other common things. And at one point from the distant I thought I was seeing a BUFF-BREASTED SANDPIPER.After the show, I scanned again and this time I found three GOLDEN PLOVERS almost in breeding plumages close to from where I watching. They were so very cooperative that they showed me their underside and lifted their wings to show there was no black shoulder patch. By this time I was joined by David Wheeler and Jim Tarolli, who told me that they had watched the peregrine and the bald eagles from the Tow path road. Jim easily picked up the WHIMBREL from here as he knew where to look for it and I had a great look at it. While I was watching it flew to a next sandbar give me an excellent flight view. After a while David saw the Knot fly into view, but was out of view for us as it had gone behind the tree. So we moved to another location from where we got an excellent (enough to identify it) look at the Knot! While we were watching some of these birds nearby in the grass we heard a call note which seemed different from that of Common Yellowthroat. Then we saw a brown bird with serrate round tail (I am not sure if I am using the right word) dark back and tail. We thought it could be a Sedge Wren. Later at some point it called again a few notes. After coming home I listened to it song and last few notes of chatter were similar to what I had heard. So possibly Chris Wood's two week ago bird might be in the area or it could have been a different bird altogether. But we did not get a good look to confirm it. To top it all a MERLIN flew over our head as it was getting dark and swallows and Purple Martins had started to gather over in the sky. As a last stop, I made a bathroom stop at Tshache where I found hundreds of swallows mostly Purple Martins were gathering over to roost at Tshache pool. I was hoping to see a nighthawk and I did see one fly over May's Point pool, but saw it flying away from me! It was a fantastic evening. In between there was a thunderstorm with a heavy down pour for about twenty minutes. Cheers Meena 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 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/ --
