On Mon. 4 Feb. 2019: Kathy Strickland & I were thrilled to see & hear several hundred long-tailed ducks on the Oswego River. For the first time ever, thanks to my hearing aid, I heard them .... to me they sounded like loud peep frogs or tree toads. For a long time I didn't know what the sound was 'til Kathy mentioned the birds "talking." Indeed, the only time we didn't hear them was when they were under water.
The river is very swift so the ducks would float downstream towards Lake Ontario & suddenly fly back upstream. When they landed they didn't gracefully slide onto the water as other ducks & geese do. They hit the water almost flat-footed & then flopped over on their faces. Very undignified looking & really funny but they seemed to be having fun splashing & occasionally all diving about at the same time. A man who had been taking pictures of them said he had never seen as many as were there. In my many trips to the river, I've not seen anywhere near what we saw. It was an awesome sight. While Kathy was looking at them I saw a very small duck pop up right below us ... an adorable _horned grebe_ in winter plumage, far prettier than any handbook pictures show. We were surprised that we could see it underwater for maybe 3 ft. as it dove to look for food. Various other ducks were to be seen, but, unlike when Becky & I were there on 15 Jan., I saw no cormorants altho' another birder said one had been seen. An adult bald eagle flew around a bit & eventually sat on the breakwall. In Jan. I had seen one fly up the river, a first there for me. To finish out our wonderful day, here is our finale: We missed seeing the black scoter but did see the male surf scoter & an amazing 20 white-winged scoters in the marina area. In with the flotilla of w-w scoters was the absolute beauty to find at the end of a 65 deg. February day ... the magnificent male _KING EIDER_ in all his showing-off glory very close to us, closer than we had dared dream. Fritzie -- 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/ --
