I think I have the 2016 Cayuga Lake Basin First Records list up to date again:
http://www.cayugabirdclub.org/Resources/cayuga-lake-basin-first-records I wasn't intentionally waiting to update the list. I prefer to keep it current, but it got ahead of me. The expected locally breeding birds are all accounted for, I think. There are still shorebirds which may show up here on their way north, or we may have to wait till early July when they start south again in larger numbers, lingering longer, and ranging more widely. And of course there are still birds showing up which simply appear to be lost, or to put it more kindly, exploring. Please let me know of things on the list that look wrong - people, locations, dates, whatever. With this much info and so many birds and birders there's a high probability I've screwed up something, or at least made it appear confusing. I try to include names of people in parties who independently find a new species on the first day. Parties are not necessarily in any order, but the places are in the same order as the parties. In the case of Black-bellied Plover the number of observers got very long when a group of a dozen Cornell students on a basin big day found a bird in breeding plumage at Knox-Marsellus in mid-afternoon overlapping in time with several other observers, but in the evening at K-M Ann Mitchell & I found one in non-breeding plumage. So I included everybody, because no single party had clear priority over either bird. The American Golden-Plovers at K-M that same day are a slightly different story. The only people who appeared to independently identify them were the student group. The Ruff which the same group reported was not described in enough detail to distinguish it from a large male Pectoral Sandpiper which Jay McGowan found there that evening. If it gets accepted by eBird, I will include it. Eastern Whip-poor-will is another odd case. Brad Walker & Jay McGowan saw one in their headlights along Bald Hill Road in Danby while doing a basin big day. However the location on their eBird report drains into Michigan Hollow where topo lines show that valley drains south to the Susquehanna, so it is out of the Cayuga Lake Basin. On the other hand Jeffrey Smith reported hearing one in Virgil at the very edge of the Basin but along a creek which clearly does drain to Cayuga Lake. It's a pretty obvious sound, so I'm not sure why it hasn't been confirmed on eBird yet. White-rumped Sandpiper was reported a few days earlier than shown but I don't know by whom (JF are you out there?). I like to include observers names, not only to give credit, but also so that there's a possibility of discussing more exactly where a bird was, what it was doing, and how it was identified. Like many great birding spots, Shindagin Hollow is just outside of the basin, so Melissa Groo's Red-headed Woodpecker is simply a fantastic yard bird, and Ethan Chaffee was the first to report one in the now-traditional area along South Mays Point Road in Tyre. There was a vague report earlier which was not accepted by eBird. Have a great summer. I hope to meet you out birding. --Dave Nutter -- 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/ --
