This afternoon I took a relaxed trip up the west side of Cayuga Lake to the mucklands along NYS-31 west of the Village of Montezuma. I did not fortify myself with scrapple per Steve Fast's recommendation, but perhaps my overly-spicy Italian sausages from yesterday had some lingering effects, because I was able to re-find his SNOWY OWL. I was scoping from my car parked by the building on the south side of the road west of the "potatoes" building, my 5th stop as I proceeded east. At 3:35pm I saw it flying low far to my south-southeast, and it alit on a long berm which I think was the far side of an east-west ditch. It sat there until 3:53 when it took off flying very low to the southeast and dropped out of my view. I believe this was in the field northeast of the end of Towpath Road. I was unable to relocate it either from the porch of the potatoes building or from East Road. Meanwhile I heard that Tim Lenz had seen a Snowy Owl over Tschache Pool. Although I never saw my bird climb out of my portion of the mucklands, the timing was plausible for it to be the same bird. Of course it may just be the time of day two owls became active. Anyway, the good news is that it's still possible to find a Snowy Owl in the Montezuma area. Mine was either a female or young bird, having a good deal of sooty spots on the wings, back, crown, & nape.
As for the rest of the trip, I did not get out early enough to see the lake totally flat calm, but I did find a COMMON LOON in the cove north of Sheldrake Point, a HORNED GREBE off Elm Beach Road, and a/the flock of several thousand SNOW GEESE midway between Dean's Cove and Aurora. As I approached Cayuga Lake State Park I added TUNDRA SWANS, a few AMERICAN WIGEONS and GADWALLS, a flock of RING-NECKED DUCKS, and a "BLUE" GOOSE. This was all in addition to the expected CANADA GEESE, MALLARDS, AMERICAN BLACK DUCKS, RING-BILLED GULLS, HERRING GULLS, and a few GREAT BLACK-BACKED GULLS.
At Montezuma NWR nearly all the water is frozen, but there was a bit of open water far out in the main pool containing CANADA GEESE, MALLARDS, AMERICAN BLACK DUCKS, at least 5 male GREEN-WINGED TEAL, 5 AMERICAN COOTS, and about a hundred NORTHERN SHOVELERS which were flushed by an adult BALD EAGLE. There were also scores of southbound TUNDRA SWANS overhead. Tschache Pool had two adult BALD EAGLES, atop muskrat lodges, one of them displacing a female NORTHERN HARRIER. There was barely any open water in Knox-Marsellus, but surrounding it were plenty of CANADA GEESE and MALLARDS, plus a few TUNDRA SWANS, AMERICAN BLACK DUCKS, and NORTHERN PINTAILS, species which were numerous out on the mucklands. There was a RED-TAILED HAWK in a tree at the edge of the woods north of Knox-Marsellus and another adult BALD EAGLE perched next to a nest in woods northeast of the intersection of NYS-89 & NYS-31. I also saw a distant eagle flying over Mays Point Pool.
--Dave Nutter
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