Because of the lack of dorm waste over the Cornell break, there are still no gulls (or Fish Crows) to speak of at the Stevenson Road compost facility. But, during my weekly census of tagged American Crows, I was able to find FOUR juvenile WHITE-CROWNED SPARROWS in the American Tree Sparrow flock along the entrance road (just past the back gate to the game farm; where the weeds meet the trees). I only rarely find an individual of this species before the main migration wave hits in May (even though they winter downstate and in Pennsylvania), so finding four was a bit of a surprise. Although I think Jay and Ken had multiple individuals in December.
Also present along the drive was the continuing leucistic Northern Mockingbird with some big white patches on its head, and a couple of very dark Red-tailed Hawks. Probably the hypothetical "abietcola" "eastern boreal form," one in particular has a very plain dark back with nearly no white spotting on the scapulars, and a Rough-legged Hawk-like complete dark belly band. I struggled to get some bad digiscoping photos of it perched, and then it flew around and around over my head to let me take over 300 SLR shots. I will post some when I can coordinate my two computer systems. Kevin Kevin J. McGowan, Ph.D. Project Manager Distance Learning in Bird Biology Cornell Lab of Ornithology 159 Sapsucker Woods Road Ithaca, NY 14850 k...@cornell.edu 607-254-2452 -- 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/ --
