I ended up stopping twice today at Ithaca's new birding hotspot, the canal area by Wegman's. First, around noon, I checked the canal areas further north and the west side of the trailer park across the canal -- some active feeders but nothing unusual in those areas. But looking up into the blustery sky, I spotted 2 COMMON LOONS migrating high overhead, and then an adult BALD EAGLE cruised over, followed by a very blotchy immature BALD EAGLE, which circled low over my head. Last week I saw a Golden Eagle circling north over the Wegnan's parking lot, so this appears to be an excellent place to see eagles!
Then I stopped there again around 3 PM to check the main canal area on the Wegman's side. It was very blustery and colder with snow showers by this point. No passerines were visible or responding to pishing in the wind, but a male WOOD DUCK was in the canal, and every time I looked up I saw large numbers of RING-BILLED GULLS circling or flying south overhead. I realized that these were not the local gulls, but rather a steady stream of apparently migrating birds, behaving like Broad-winged Hawks, coming in from the north in loose groups, circling higher in tight kettles, and then cruising south again. In the 30 minutes or so I was there, I counted 1,400 birds -- as I studied the flocks I saw only Ring-bills and no other gull species, and in fact all the birds I looked at looked like adults. As a snow squall came in and I headed back to my car, the YELLOW WARBLER came by me very close, only about 6 inches above the ground in the goldenrods at the edge of the canal. If was flitting and sallying actively in the low vegetation and never vocalized -- no doubt struggling to find food as the weather turns colder and stormier. Back at home, a very late CHIPPING SPARROW was at my feeders for the third day in a row, and a pair of COMMON RAVENS flew over calling -- always a good yard bird in Northeast Ithaca. KEN Ken Rosenberg Conservation Science Program Cornell Lab of Ornithology 607-254-2412 607-342-4594 (cell) k...@cornell.edu<mailto:k...@cornell.edu> -- 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/ --
