Hello all, Yesterday 5 brave birders, 3 from the Cayuga Bird Club and 2 from the Cortland-Lime Hollow Bird Club, joined me for some birding of the Southern Highlands. Obviously the conditions were far less than optimum with the snow and high winds. At times ground blizzard conditions occurred, but we continued on. Fortunately, despite the weather conditions, the birds were very cooperative. The driving was very slow but we did eventually arrive at Shackham Rd Fabius/Truxton, Morgan Hill State Forest at 8:45. Upon arrival we could hear lots of Evening Grosbeaks, and within a few minutes we were surrounded by ~40 EVENING GROSBEAKS and a flock ~100 COMMON REDPOLLS with 1 good "GREATER" COMMON REDPOLL seen by all.
We then decided to continue on towards DeRuyter for some birding instead of back-tracking to Summerhill. At Dr. Coon Ln (formerly Coon Tree Ln) we had a flock of ~60 COMMON REDPOLLS with one good female HOARY REDPOLL seen by most. We didn't get to see all the needed traits, but this bird noticeably stood out each time it was viewed. Within 5-6 minutes of watching the redpolls an ADULT MALE COOPER'S HAWK came in and grabbed a redpoll not more than 25-30 feet away. The next stop was Hunt Rd where we had a really nice roadside flock of ~35 HORNED LARKS and ~25 SNOW BUNTINGS. It was nice to view them from the warm confines of our vehicles. Since this was a location I often get multiple Lapland Longspurs, we checked for one but could not turn one up. The Hunt Rd feeders were surprisingly quiet except for a dozen Goldfinches and other common birds. Around the corner on East Lake Rd we turned up another flock of 20 HORNED LARKS and 30 SNOW BUNTINGS, but again we could not find a Lappy. One funny moment did happen on East Lake when checking the field birds --the manure spreader came along and started spreading just up wind of us - -of course it sent us all running away laughing. We did not thoroughly check all the spreads in the area, since some locations were not conducive to pulling over. A quick stop at the Mechanic Street feeders in DeRuyter turned up some more goldfinches and redpolls. It was hard to see many of the birds so we continued on to Paradise Hill where we had 40+ EVENING GROSBEAKS, 30 COMMON REDPOLLS (another good candidate for a Hoary but it was hard to be sure because it was up in the tree puffed out), 1 RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH and 1 BARRED OWL -- unfortunately most of us did not see the Barred Owl before it flew. It was a fun day and enjoyed by all despite the crazy weather.--a day to be remembered. A big thanks goes out to the brave souls that joined me! cheers, Matt -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web LIVE – Free email based on Microsoft® Exchange technology - http://link.mail2web.com/LIVE -- 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/ --
