Yesterday, I took a friend up the west side of the lake and had the following highlights.
At Newman Golf Course --in the Inlet: about 6 Pintails --Redwing Blackbirds in the shrubs on the shore --6 GW Teal in the middle of the Golf Course among cattail/puddle (5 male, one femal) --Great-horned owl sitting in her nest with a moving white fluffy round object poking out (I think she is the one who hunts the sewer rats near my house in Fall Creek. Yes, Fall Creek has rats. Also, I found a wing and duck torso skeleton nearby and wonder who at it. I will post the picture on Facebook CBC.) Driving down the hill from Upper Taughannok, we saw a tremendous huge raft of bobbing balls of white, which I guessed was Snow Geese, perhaps hundreds of thousands of them spanning from somewhere between the salt mine to Sheldrake Point. So we estimated the "line" formation which was changing from blob to line formation extending about 2/3 of the distance from the west side to the east side of the lake. We tried to get closer at Barton Camp but still could not identify them. By the time we got to Sheldrake, the mass was gone. However, there was a smaller flotilla of about several thousand down one of the beach roads (right after a red barn when heading north). We got to within 25 yards and could see about 10 Blue Geese (my first!). After about fifteen minutes and a few outbursts of gaggling, they all stated to "drift" out to the middle of the lake, then they started to all face north EVERY ONE OF THEM, then they formed a line and pushed into one another while all reorienting themselves east, EVERY ONE of them facing east. this orienting took about four minutes and all of this was video taped. Then it was as if someone shot the start gun, and one by one in a flash, they all took flight in the most orderly manner. I was in awe and yelling out what I was watching. I could not believe it. Has anyone ever seen this behavior before? Perhaps this is common, but I had no idea that there was this kind of communication going on in the water. I know they take turns in the air with taking the lead, but this was remarkable. THEN, I noticed about 100 yards south, where an equally large flotilla of CANADIAN GEESE -- 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/ --
