I meant Cayuga Lake State Park (in Seneca Falls), not Seneca Lake State Park (where a handful of snow geese have been residing year round).
Suan On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 11:21 PM Suan Hsi Yong <suan.y...@gmail.com> wrote: > > 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/ --