Kevin and I journeyed up to Summerhill this morning, where we spent a couple of hours watching the big redpoll flock at the feeders on Fire Lane E on Lake Como Road. The flock is still big, at least 200 and probably closer to 300 at times. The are pretty flighty, so we didn't get much to time to watch them actually on the feeders, and the majority of the flock would be absent for long periods of time. The flock often sits in the spruces over the houses for long periods of time as well. Although viewing conditions weren't ideal and the birds were moving around a lot, I was able to find at least one HOARY REDPOLL I was confident of, an immature or female bird with fairly thin side streaking, fading towards the flanks, single thing streak on the undertail, and fairly pale back and nape. I also saw at least two other birds that I suspect were immature or dark female Hoaries, but my looks were not conclusive. None of these birds particularly stood out, though, unlike the bright white male Hoaries we see sometimes and some of the paler females. Andrew Van Norstrand and I observed five different Hoary Redpolls at the Beaver Lake Nature Center in Baldwinsville near Syracuse on Tuesday (photos towards the end of my winter album: https://picasaweb.google.com/jmcgowan57/Winter20102011#). The viewing is great there, and you can watch the birds come to some very close feeders from inside the building. I highly recommend it if you are in the area. Some of these birds were quite pale and easy to pick out of the relatively small group of redpolls there.
On the way up to Summerhill this morning, we saw three flocks of Snow Buntings. A group of several hundred buntings was accompanied by about 30 Horned Larks and at least one LAPLAND LONGSPUR on North Road/CR 163 a bit south of the intersection with Dutcher Road (I think); another group of a couple hundred was in the back of a large manure spread towards the north end of West Malloryville Road; and a couple of dozen with larks were on Salt Road just north of 90. Finally, for those interested in the history of birding in the Cayuga Lake Basin or just rare birds in general, I recently posted a compilation of photos of rare birds that I have taken over the past 11 years in the Basin (unfortunately, I wasn't taking pictures my FIRST 11 years in the Basin.) Many of them are quite poor and useful only for documentation purposes, but some of you may find them of interest nonetheless. https://picasaweb.google.com/jmcgowan57/ACollectionOfBasinRarities20002011# Good birding! Jay McGowan Dryden, NY -- 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/ --
