Yesterday afternoon the snow geese hung out on the shore of some houses between Seneca Lake State Park and Wolffy's. Many visitors got to see them, though parking on lawns became a problem which prompted the police to come by to remind people to stay off private property.
I was there a couple hours waiting for an eruption which didn't happen. The geese were remarkably tame - some of them anyways - as they came ashore to forage on the lawns sometimes quite close to people. This contradicts my assumption that they were always wary of people, in the past preferring places like Knox-Marsellus or the middle of the lake far enough away from people. At around 5pm, a three gunshots fired, which sent the flock into the sky - the eruption I had been waiting for - but relative to other eruptions I've seen in the past they seemed to resettle fairly quickly in my opinion, and if anything they came in closer to shore, just repositioned a little farther away from the hunters on the boat to the south. I think they only picked up 2 or 3. Not a bad day's harvest, I suppose, but certainly not a high percentage :-), and barely putting a dent in the overpopulation problem. In the next ten minutes or so two single shots were fired -- on both occasions, the goose cacophony would pause for a full second of silence before continuing, and to my surprise, on both occasions no geese took flight. It was as if the geese had figured out that if they stayed in close to the houses they would be safe from the hunters! Less conspicuously though no less remarkable, IMO, was a scattering of ducks offshore from the geese -- some pepper to complement the heavy dose of salt. They were mostly Aythyas off all kinds, and did not raft tightly like the redheads like to do. On several occasions a passing boat would send large numbers of them into the sky as they circled back and forth before resettling. Here's a video of the snow geese: https://youtu.be/r2GdMs7Lvzs Suan -- 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/ --
