A little after 4pm today (May 14), I saw two Forster's Terns at Stewart
Park. They flew over without much pause, headed south.
Sydney Penner
This afternoon (Friday 14 May) during a brief break in a busy taxi day
I stopped at Myers Point. On the spit I found only ~20 immature
HERRING GULLS. As I was leaving, something with narrow white wings
caught my eye far to the north. Scoping revealed 7 terns sitting on the
water together considerably north of Salt Point. Everytime one got up
to move it showed the gleaming white upper primaries of FORSTER'S
TERNS. When they all took flight I found that all were Forster's, but
their number had increased to 14. Another scan and I counted 22 terns,
not all of which I could ID, but two of which were COMMON TERNS.
They worked their way north into the shimmer and faded from view,
which was easier to explain than their appearance.
On a walk at Stewart Park after work I found a female WOOD DUCK
and her family in the swan pond - a tight crowd of ~10 tiny ducklings
with yellow cheeks split by a dark line, plus the last two in line with
entirely reddish brown fluffy heads - MERGANSERLINGS - not sure
which species.
About yesterday evening's COMMON NIGHTHAWK sighting, sorry
about the ambiguity of my brief text message. When an afternoon of
distracted sky scanning while gardening and lawn-mowing revealed
no migrating Nighthawks despite the southish winds, I decided I needed
to leave my yard. I climbed the nearby bridge of NYS 89 across Ithaca's
Fllood Control Channel (technically I believe the Cayuga Inlet is on the
opposite side of Inlet Island). I scanned the skies without luck until I
saw the appropriate irregular and somewhat floppy movement for a
feeding Common NIghthawk low against the sky far to my north. My
scope at 60X gave it the right shape, but I never saw the white stripes
in the wings even though I could tell it was dark overall. The bird was
probably over Renwick Sanctuary. I lost track of it when it dipped below
the treeline for me. The only birds I saw going north were individual
gulls,
but a handful of BARN SWALLOWS and a CHIMNEY SWIFT headed south.
--Dave Nutter
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