The very successful Cayuga Bird Club field trip to Niagara Falls today started and ended notably with owls in the Basin.
Just after dawn at 7:00 am, we passed through King Ferry going north on 90, and I remarked that we were entering one of the best areas in the Basin for Short-eared Owls. Sure enough, just as we passed Lake Road (that heads to Long Point) we had 2 or maybe 3 in the field to the west. We pulled into the driveway just before the bistro and hopped out to get great views as they flew around, foraged, and then harassed an early rising Northern Harrier. The Niagara River and gorge was good, although gull numbers seemed down to me. We dipped on Lark Sparrow in Ft. Erie, but did get an unexpected young male King Eider that eventually joined some mallards and mergansers loafing on shore. The falls area produced a young Glaucous Gull, one or two young Black-legged Kittiwakes, an Iceland Gull, a few Lesser Black-backed Gulls, and two probable Lesser Bb x Herring hybrids. No Red Phalarope or Purple Sandpiper. The powerplants offered a large number of Iceland Gulls (10 minimum), and we found a single adult Little Gull at the Queenston boat launch. A relatively quick customs stop (surprising because we had a British passport with us) allowed us to arrive at the Niagara Falls airport just at the end of dusk, where a sharp-eyed student spotted a Snowy Owl atop one of the out buildings. An after-dark trip up the road on the east side of the airport provided another Snowy Owl, this time perched along the road on top of a utility pole. It gave us great, if dark, scope views, then flew and foraged a bit for us before flying across the road nearly right over us and perching in a field to the east. As we were leaving it came back to a utility pole ahead of us, right next to a lighted gate where we pulled in directly below it. It gave no indication it knew we were in the world, or cared, and we got great looks out the windows. But, the day had one more treat for us. I deviated from my normal route home via the west side of Cayuga Lake, for no good reason other than I thought I could do an efficient gas-up and student drop-off, and a thought that there might be a better chance of a Snowy Owl encounter going through the agricultural fields of the west side. Sure enough, on rt 96 south of Waterloo, apparently a safe distance within the Basin, one of the students started thinking about finding more Snowy Owls, and the second utility pole he looked at had one! We turned around and watched it fly up, not quite across the moon, but out into the fields west of the road. (Somebody dropped a pin at the location and might post the precise location tomorrow.) It was a very, very nice day. Kevin -- 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/ --
