The short story: We encountered 27 immature Bald Eagles together at the North spillway of Tschache Pool on Sunday. It was the largest convocation of eagles I have ever experienced. And I mean 27 all together... that doesn't count the birds we were seeing over head or the birds we encountered earlier. I would be interested to know if anyone else has encountered this large of a group in the area.
The long story: My wife and I are volunteering for a Marsh Bird Monitoring Survey again this season and our assigned sites are at the North end of Tschache Pool. We used Sunday afternoon's beautiful weather to scout our locations and make sure we could manage them all in the allotted time. One of the perks of volunteering is that nice feeling you get from doing something to help out a place you love but ANOTHER perk is often the chance to get into areas of the Refuge that are closed to the public. I was thinking of both of those perks as Laura unlocked the gate and we drove my truck and canoe onto the dike. We put in at the pumphouse and let the GPS guide us to our locations. Three Trumpeter Swans were vocalizing along with American Coots, Common Gallinules and American Bitterns. What looked like dozens of floating condoms turned out to be swim bladders of carp (thank you Google). As we worked our way farther North. we had several sightings of Bald Eagles, both adult and immature. Our final two survey points are close to the spillway at the end of the dike. As we paddled closer, we could make out several eagles in the still-leafless trees. "Three eagles!!!!", I exclaimed. Then I looked at the tree to the right and said "EIGHT MORE!". With one or two scattered in other trees we were already in double digits. But the real show were the eagles that were on the ground, invisible to us over the lip of the dike. As the eagles in the trees spooked, the ones on the ground lifted off one by one (the one wish I have is that I could have gotten a photo of the majority of eagles together. Instead, I have many photos of single eagles...). As mentioned above, 27 in all. They were all attracted to the carp that are attracted to the flowing water. The trip back to the truck yielded a pair of Mute Swans and dozens of Green-winged Teal. Can't wait to see what our next visit will hold! The perks of volunteer work :) -- 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/ --
