Hi all,
I was listening to the radio program 'wait wait don't tell me' while I was roasting whole wet peanuts on the stove. So in between I just looked out of my front door. Between a meter gap of two massive Norway maples, I had glimpses of a bird some 500 ft away in the skyline flying above Six miles Creek upstream. It looked like a possible nighthawk. Then there was no gap in the tree almost till about 400 ft to the left of the first gap above the Six Mile Creek. So I thought if it was a migrating nighthawk I might see it after a few minutes. After a couple of minutes keeping watch in the gap I did see a bird come into view and it did look like a NIGHTHAWK. So I kept looking in that direction. Soon I saw three birds circling in the sky, I was pretty sure they were Nighthawks. In between I had to stir the peanuts so that they would get burnt. So I did that and came out to look still those birds were flying around. Next thing I had to do was to get my binoculars from my car which would take at least a minute. But I took risk and went a got my binoculars. Those birds were still flying. I got very good looks at them with beautiful white wing patch visible. Then the luck got much better. They decided come closer to where I was standing then I realized there were more than three, at least five of them. Then two of them decided fly above my yard and house and return back to the Six Mile valley. This all happened while I was still listening to the radio but not with full attention and occasionally stirring the peanuts. The time between the Nighthawk's first seeing and last sight was two interviews - one of Brooke shields and the other of Rob Lowe and it was almost 16+ minutes!!! It was very enjoyable!!! Then I stood there for another 20 minutes but no more birds. Earlier, the post of Buff-breasted Sandpiper made me take a trip to MNWR. But there were no sandpipers nor any other shorebirds except a small flock of which looked like peeps got disturbed by a low flying female Northern Harrier and they disappeared somewhere and a Killdeer (heard only) at Puddlers. I visited Red-headed Woodpecker's spot at May's Point pool. There was a this year's almost grown up young was busy fly catching, while the parent nervously watched it from a distance. The young behaved in a typical flycatcher manner. I watched it take a large flying insect in midair. Otherwise I saw an oddly paired darner, where the male had released female's head but the female was still attached to his second segment and the male was trying to get free, but could not do so as he was still stuck to the female. Two Monarch butterflies, and a few Wandering Gliders were other sightings of interest. Cheers Meena Meena Haribal Ithaca NY 14850 42.429007,-76.47111 http://www.haribal.org/ http://meenaharibal.blogspot.com/ Ithaca area moths: https://plus.google.com/118047473426099383469/posts Dragonfly book sample pages: http://www.haribal.org/dragonflies/samplebook.pdf -- 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/ --
