My sister and I drove from Lansing to Long Pt. Road along Rt. 90 starting at 3:30 pm today.
Near the NYS DEC deer hunting check-in building just past the Triangle diner, we saw a ROUGH LEGGED HAWK cross in front of us and fly across a barren field west of Rt. 90. Then as we approached Long Pt. Rt., we saw an A. KESTREL on the wire above the ditch on the east side of Rt. 90. Immediately on arriving on Long Pt. Rd. by the winery we spotted another raptor, then lost it before we could ID it, then a few minutes later we saw our first SHORT EARED OWL in the field south of the winery building. It landed in the mostly dead tree on the right end of the tree line, the field beyond the grape vines. Looking up towards the picturesque old barn across the road, we then saw a male NORTHERN HARRIER in the field there. We then drove over the hill, down the road a bit, below the white house on the north side of the road, because we thought we saw another owl over the field towards the lake. Sure enough, soon we saw two SHORT EARED OWLS interacting with each other in the air. They did this a bit, then separated. We parked below the house and watched the two owls fly and hover over the fields on both sides of the road for quite awhile until the cold wind drove us back to the warm car. We also got to watch a nice, pink winter sunset. Nice Christmas present! Donna L. Scott Lansing Station Road Lansing, NY 14882 d...@cornell.edu -- 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/ --