Following Matt Young's reports of Evening Grosbeaks from Shackham Rd. on Saturday (thanks Matt!), I made the drive up to Morgan Hill State Forest last morning. And sure enough, the birds were exactly where he described. During the ~2 hours I was there, the feeders hosted ~20 EVENING GROSBEAKS and ~100 COMMON REDPOLLS. The light falling snow made up for the flat light.
http://rramanujan.smugmug.com/Birds/Cardinals-Grosbeaks/7409232_mkyFg#1194652602_PNNeX On the way back, I took a detour via Summerhill. The Hovel Chalet held only the common winter feeder birds. Also, the huge redpoll flock that has been reported from Fire Ln E on Lake Como Road in the recent past was nowhere to be found (though I didn't stick around very long). On Lane Rd in Locke, right next to the dairy farm, I found a field that hosted many hundreds of Starlings and ~25 HORNED LARKS. http://rramanujan.smugmug.com/Birds/Larks-Swallows/8245552_LKRN8#1193458803_7zipB And this morning, I decided to use the bright sunny (albeit quite frigid) conditions to make the drive up to Aurora/Union Springs to see if I could photograph the large waterfowl rafts that were reported over the weekend. On Lake Rd in Aurora, I did find one large raft. This picture captures roughly 10% of the total raft, and I'd estimate there are ~300 in this picture, which puts the raft size at ~3000 REDHEADS. There was also a *much* larger raft in the middle of the lake (easily 10k+ birds), visible from various points along the shoreline in and around Union Springs, but too far out to photograph. http://rramanujan.smugmug.com/Birds/Waterfowl/7409392_5Wsjf#1195817823_hMAM9 All in all, a quite productive 24 hours! Raghu -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
