Hi all, I decided to walk Waterfront trail from Stewart Park side to Farmers Market and also look for Great-horned owls. I decided to do only with binoculars and no scope.
There were thousands of Redheads scattered all around the south-end of the lake and not in a tight group as we see them very often in winter. Among them, I spotted a few Common Mergansers and Scaups. There were lots of gulls sitting along the edge of the ice and in the water. So I was scanning for a white winged gull. I did not see any. I continued walking. As I was coming to the Rowing club end suddenly all gulls took to the air. I did not see anything that could have spooked them. I thought that was good time to look for white winged gulls. After I scanned a few gulls from one side, I was soon on a white winged gull. I followed it for some time in my binocular view. There came a second white looking gull t as big as the Glaucous for short time in my view. But I tried to follow the first bird, So I lost sight of the second bird. Both birds were flying next to each other for some time one had some darker colors. My brain did not take in all the details, but it looked different from the first one. I thought it might be another Glaucous juvenile. I hope I will get chance to study lot more of these Glaucous and Iceland Gulls in a next few days in Iceland! It seems by summer Iceland Gulls become scarcer in Iceland! I later searched the Golf course for GHO nest but I did not see any signs. Interestingly in one of the oaks, right in the center where several branches were coming out, I saw a white egg like shape. I was excited. so I went closer to look at it closely. It turned out to be a golf ball! There were lots of Canada Geese on the course. At one point there was lots of honking going on. So I looked at the location form where the noise was coming. In the center of several geese there were two groups of geese of each about 5 to 6 birds. Each side was facing the other side and honking and walking closer to meet in the middle. One stood in front of another from the other group and honked in its face. Second chased away one from the other group and third also did the same and rest of them stood facing each other a meter away and honking. It was so funny to watch them. I wonder what was all that about, while the others peacefully continued to feed around these guys. I wish I had my video camera to shoot the behavior. Then I continued the walk and took a turn and headed back to Stewart Park. As I was nearing the TCAT garage a falcon flew over from IHS and flew fairly low over the golf course towards the geese. It turned out to be a Merlin. In the cottonwoods of the Stewart Park, there was an Eastern Bluebird singing a strange repeated single note call which I have never heard before. Overall it was a very pretty day to be out walking! 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/[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/ --
