Three hardy souls joined me on this cold breezy day for a CBC field trip. The lab parking lot saw much activity from tree sparrows, juncos, and goldfinches. Our first stop at East Shore Park found the ice too far out for decent views of buffleheads, goldeneyes, and mergansers, but Myers Park had plenty of waterfowl huddled north of the spit at Salt Point for great views. A young GLAUCOUS GULL flew about and landed on the water; also present were several RED-BREASTED MERGANSERS and at least two male NORTHERN PINTAILS, one accompanying a female. We drove around to Salt Point for better looks at the gathering of aythyas, many redheads and canvasbacks, some scaups (the ones I ventured to ID were greater), and a few ring-necked ducks. I happened to notice one among the canada geese looking quite small, only a notch bigger than the neighboring mallards, and am quite sure it is a CACKLING GOOSE.
>From there we drove up Salmon Creek to Indian Field Road, our convoy briefly merged with Jay's car, but struck out on snowys or much else save for a few horned larks scattering as we drove by and never giving good looks, only teasing us with their beautiful songs seeming to emanate from empty-looking fields. We cut across to Aurora and headed for Union Springs where Mill Pond was packed with canada geese, which presently took off in a spectacle of cacophony. Towards the far side of the pond were RED-NECKED GREBES (one for sure, probably two) and a HORNED GREBE along with aythyas and gadwalls and American wigeons, one of whom was green-headed but lacked a white pate. There were also a few odd brownies that suggested ruddy ducks, but now I'm not sure. No wood duck. Factory pond hosted some up-close gadwalls and a ring-necked duck; beyond the park was a small area of open water in which was a lone sleeping swan amid ducks and geese. Dorie's was empty of customers but had good sandwich, coffee, and dessert. >From the boat house were about a dozen more tundra swans among a fairly rich variety of canadas and aythyas and a flock of black ducks. Long Point State Park also held a good raft of aythyas, and not too far beyond were about eight WHITE-WINGED SCOTERS which dove in unison each time a harassing herring gull hovered close. A pretty good outing for a late winter day. Suan -- 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/ --
