Almost every day around the lake is well spent. This not spectacular trip had its great moments.
We started at Andy's house near Game Farm Rd and Rt. 366 and counted 47 red-tails at the nearby game farm and continued to see numerous red-tails during the trip, perhaps 80 or 90 for the day. As we were driving up to the point at Myers Point a large falcon with streaked breast frew off to the north. Seen very briefly through dirty car windows we could very definitely identify it as a falcon larger than a Merlin with a streaked breast. Courting golden-eye showed how ridiculous courting males can be. North of Triangle Diner we found the only manure strip of the entire trip: about 150 Horned Lark, 30-50 Snow Buntings, and two Lapland Longspur (or one that moved around a good deal). The birds came up to seed heads along the shoulder of the road a few feet from the (still dirty) car windows. What we could see was really neat. Aurora Bay (from the parking lot above the boathouse) we say five Horned Grebes, but no Eared after a thorough search in good light conditions. (We did get outside the car, which was recognizable as ours. See there was a good reason to have those especially dirty windows.) From Towpath Rd. we saw several hundred swans (Now how did Bob distinguish Trumpeter from Tundra several hundred yards out? Maybe he cleaned his car windows.) Van Dyne Spoor Rd., Morgan Rd and Carncross Rd, collectively, produced two light phase and one dark phase Rough-legged. (I don't know where the robins that Bob saw went to.) and a parked car that blocked our passage along the dike. Please, move over to the side when parked on those roads with narrow dikes.) Near Ovid we saw a few bluebirds and a Mockingbird on a television antenna above a house surrounded primarily by corn stubble. We didn't find any short-eared despite roughly being in the right general area around Ovid and Interlaken at the right time. It was noticeable that almost all the fields had been cut barren and that the few hay fields we saw were cut short without seed heads. This is not good mouse habitat. -- 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/ --
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