Just before the rains came last evening, while walking the dog in my backyard, I heard a single 'qwok' looked up and saw a largish winged bird flapping rapidly NW which would be more or less on a path from Sapsucker Woods to Cayuga Lake (or many other ponds along the way).
Listening to all readily available recordings of Black-crowned and Yellow-crowned Night Herons convinced me it sounded more like BCNH. But the wing profile was rather narrow (leading to trailing edge) and the bird seemed overall rather darker blue. Googling flying Night Herons, I found more YCNH images that looked like that, whereas BCNH seemed to have a fuller rounder wing profile. So, nice NEW yard bird, but semi-unsatisfying that I couldn't nail it to species. I saw no reports on this list from anyone observing either at SSW yesterday. Did anyone? ______________________ Chris Pelkie Research Analyst Bioacoustics Research Program Cornell Lab of Ornithology 159 Sapsucker Woods Road Ithaca, NY 14850 -- 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/ --