In my ongoing efforts to obtain as much information on our marsh birds this year as possible, I have been kayaking the Bashakill the last couple of weeks to add to the information I get for the "Bird Studies Canada Marsh Monitoring Program". This has been very productive. Today while I was kayaking the channel, I was very surprised to have an American Coot swim out into the channel in front of me. It was just a short distance from where 3-4 American Coot spent the spring, last seen by me on 5/2 when the emergent vegetation got to high to see them any more. They had been present for one month at that time. I took a number of photos of the bird, as it is only our second June record ever. When the bird went back into the vegetation, I heard a number of clucks from either side of its entry point. I would normally have written them off as Moorhens, but now I'm not certain. Is it possible that American Coot could colonize the Bashakill? Either way, we currently have four species of Gruiformes present at the Bashakill. Today survey (only two miles) produced:
13 Common Moorhen 2 Virginia Rail 1 Least Bittern 1 American Coot John Haas -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
