Around 11 this morning I arrived at Harris Park in Cayuga to find Chris T-H and company with scopes aimed at buoy 49 about two miles away showing two bumps perched at its base: the bigger a Great Black-Backed Gull, the smaller the Brown Booby, I was told. Cool, I shrugged with a mix of awe and incredulity, as I proceeded to pump up my inflatable "kayak" and started paddling into the wind, light but enough to make the journey choppy. In about an hour I arrived near the bouy and began snapping away at the brown booby resting next to the great black-backed gull. The potential mistake I made here was sitting in the navigational channel, which caused an oncoming motorboat to steer away from me and thus very close to that buoy, trailing a wake that swayed the bouy so much that the booby had to raise its wings to maintain balance, but the two birds remained unfazed. Perhaps the big swell reminded the booby of home.
Anyhow, I positioned myself to drift downwind slowly to about 20-30 yards from the bouy and snapped away, the birds still relaxed and unalarmed, though certainly keeping their eyes on me. Soon I was downwind of then with a million photos (actually, "only" 680), and I paddled back towards Harris Park. I soon found myself very seasick from staring through the camera on the choppy waters, so I just lay down on my boat and took a nap in the pleasant afternoon sun and breeze, drifting ever so slowly back to Harris Park. At one point the loud rumble and horn signaled the passage of a train - this I think was the cause of the bird flushing (I was too seasick to scan with binoculars from the rocky boat; I also didn't think that it might flush, though in retrospect I now remember trains being a bird flusher on at least two other occasions). I posted a few photos on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/suan.yong/posts/10210844942937601 Suan _____________________ http://suan-yong.com _____________________ http://suan-yong.com -- 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/ --
