About 20 birders joined me on Saturday, October 8 and Sunday, October 9 for Cayuga Bird Club field trips to the Cornell Community Gardens, a site renowned and much beloved among local birders as a hotspot for migrant sparrows and other field birds in late September and October.
Saturday’s wet weather may have suppressed our turnout a bit, but those who did attend were dampened only mildly in body and not at all in spirit. And the birds seemed completely unaffected. We ended up getting several good sightings of LINCOLN’S SPARROW, WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW, WHITE-THROATED SPARROW, CHIPPING SPARROW, SAVANNAH SPARROW, and SONG SPARROW, plus definitive but somewhat unsatisfying views of a SWAMP SPARROW and a PALM WARBLER. Throughout the morning, we also saw impressive numbers of other birds overhead –one flock of more than two dozen KILLDEER over the fields across the road, maybe 50 CEDAR WAXWINGS, and TURKEY VULTURES circling near and far all morning. Twice we saw a PILEATED WOODPECKER making dashes here and there high in the treeline. Maybe the most cooperative birds of the whole outing were a couple of young or female PURPLE FINCHES perched nearly shoulder-to-shoulder for a couple of minutes, gobbling little green berries in the hedgerow at the south end of the site. Sunday’s field trip began with a distant but exciting view of at least thirteen WILD TURKEYS in the field across the road, walking and then trotting away fast with necks extended and weight forward, showing how surprisingly well built they are for speed. It was dry but much colder, with a discernible turnover of birds in the plots with the change in the weather. We saw all of the sparrow species of the previous day except Swamp, plus at least half a dozen DARK-EYED JUNCOS and two or three FIELD SPARROWS, the first of those two species I’ve seen at the gardens in many visits this fall. An EASTERN TOWHEE calling from the treeline brought our weekend sparrow species total to a tidy 10. Again the hedgerow offered added interest, this time with both RUBY-CROWNED and GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLETS offering up fine views. The north winds swept in some birds throughout the morning too – some migrating BLUE JAYS, a NORTHERN HARRIER that blazed from far north to far south in about 10 seconds, and another fleeting buteo that I later concluded, with Bob McGuire’s confirmation, must have been a very late BROAD-WINGED HAWK (I noted the correct shape and underwing pattern, and Bob saw the tail). Thanks to all who attended! Mark Chao -- 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/ --
