?Hi all, Yesterday, four of us went on a CBC bird trip.
Our first halt was Myers Point. A Merlin flew pat us and landed in a tree conveniently, although very high but gave us long scope views. Scanning of the lake produced a very distant grebe, based on its profile I think it was a Red-necked Grebe, which was barely visible occasionally when it was riding on top of the waves. Then there was a single loon, which disappeared (dove) after I saw it for sometime and did not see it again. As we were driving along 34B in Lansing we were forced to stop three times to take pictures of the beautiful cloud formation. The clouds seemed to some as blowing snow and to me it seemed like waves in the sea with caps, the typical drawing we used to draw as a kids of seascape. The sky in the west looked orange-yellow as if sun is about to go down and that was around 2.00 PM! We were all smitten by the beauty of the cloud formation. There must have been several fronts clashing with each other. Then we stopped at Aurora, where I counted at least 27 Common Loons, but could have been more and nothing else other than distant Canada Geese and mallards. At the Union Spring Ponds we had several Gadwalls, Buffleheads and a Redhead. By that time it was getting almost dark around 3.00 pm we were afraid that we wont be able to see anything on the Wildlife Drive. By this time we were receiving the RBAs/emails from Jay McGowan, who was ahead of us and scaring all the birds :-) He wrote in one of his RBAs "Eagles are the worst". So you figure out what was happening ahead of us. On the Wildlife drive we had some of the birds which Jay reported viz- lots of ducks that included Shovellers, Green-winged Teals, Lesser and Greater Scaups, more Gadwalls, Coots, AM. Widgeons, Ruddy ducks with their tail sticking out in the air. but we missed the Eared Grebe. Along the drive we also had a flock of 6 or so Snow Buntings that gave us good looks and two Eastern Meadowlarks, which got flushed several times by the car in front of us and we could see their flashing white tail. At the shorebird flats we did see the American Avocet feeding, along with a large crowd of kids watching the bird through the scope. I am glad they got see the beautiful bird through the scope and it was oblivious to the large crowd watching it from the shore! We looked for Glossy ibis, but it was probably hiding in the grass and totally out of our view. We also did not spend a whole lot of time as it was fairly dark and we wanted to go to East Road. We missed the Snowy Owl, which had already flushed to North Spring Pool! We enjoyed the East Road birds! I counted 47 Sandhill Cranes and two of them danced for a short period. Numerous Snow Geese, twice I saw a Ross's Goose may be the same one or may be two in almost same area, lots of Tundra Swans, ducks, which we did not bother to identify as it was too dark to see any colors and thousands of Canada Geese. As we headed back, between Mays Point and Tschache Pool, we saw thousands of blackbirds that included lot more Grackles than Red-winged Blackbirds passing over head around us as large rivers. It was an amazing sight. I never get tired of seeing these spectacles blackbirds coming to roost! Overall it was nice evening with great people! Cheers Meena Meena Haribal Ithaca NY 14850 42.429007,-76.47111 http://www.haribal.org/ http://meenaharibal.blogspot.com/ Ithaca area moths: https://plus.google.com/118047473426099383469/posts Dragonfly book sample pages: http://www.haribal.org/dragonflies/samplebook.pdf -- 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/ --
