Susan Danskin, Diane Morton, Ken Kemphus, and I drove up the lake today on what we dubbed a “Ross’s Goose Chase”. Ultimately we did find a single Ross’s in the massive flock of some tens of thousands of Snow Geese on the ice and in the water to the north of the old Towpath Machine Shop in the Village of Cayuga. Susan spotted the first candidate around noon, but we were never able, as a group, to get on it. On our way back, later in the afternoon, we ran into Jay and Livia at Mud Lock. They had just come from watching a Ross’s in the same area we had been looking earlier. We returned and rather quickly found (refound?) the little guy.
The highlight of the day, however, were the two EURASIAN WIGEONS that we encountered. Ken picked the first one out as we were looking west from Ladoga. It was fairly close in, the lake was nearly calm, and the light was over our shoulders. So the viewing was great! The second Eurasian appeared with two American Wigeons close to shore along Lake Road just south of Long Point State Park. It was swimming slowly north, and we lost sight of it behind some houses and trees. We later heard that Jay and Livia refound it farther north, just before the Aurora bluffs. In the afternoon we heard, again from Jay, that an apparent third Eurasian Wigeon was on or along the ice south of Mud Lock. It sounds like a three-Eurasian Wigeon day. Other highlights were at least 20 Horned Grebes, several in near-breeding plumage in Aurora Bay (seen from the bluffs), and the sky-filling flocks of thousands and thousands of Snow Geese. Bob McGuire -- 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/ --
