Hi all, Nine members of Cayuga Bird Club joined me on a trip to look for warblers (in late September, a joke? ) and other birds in Connecticut Hills and Light House Woods. It was very windy and cold. But we did go around on Conn Hill road, to highest point in Tompkins county and to Boyland road and back. We stopped at various places, where ever we heard chickadees. Chickadees were around but they were accompanied by very few non-chickadees. We did see a few birds, one each of Yellow-rumped Warbler, Black-throated Green, Magnolia warbler, Blue-headed Vireo and a Ruby-crowned Kinglet (heard only) along with usual resident birds. We also had Downy, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, No. Flickers and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. On the way in we found three Red-tailed Hawks and several dive into the grass, weeds, flowers/pumpkin patches. A few of them did give us chance to look at them. They were a couple of Song Sparrows and Chipping Sparrows. We had on several locations American Robins that were feeding on white fruits of Dogwoods. From the meadows we watched zooming Turkey Vultures, they seemed to be enjoying flying fast taking advantage of the east wind. We enjoyed watching small clouds moving fast in one direction where as large clouds higher up were going in the other direction, I guess we at that point, watching east wind and northwest wind clash!
We also observed many Blue Jays migrating or stopping over in Conn. Hills. At the pond we watched a couple of Red-breasted Nuthatches go back and forth from one side of the road to the other several times. We concluded that probably they were caching food somewhere. From Conn Hills some of us landed in Light House woods. Here we were lucky to find a mixed flock. We actually followed them into the woods. In this flock we had a beautiful HOODED Warblers (I think only I got very good looks at it), Blackpoll warbler (I had trouble remembering who has pale colored legs, now I can remember it as Blackpoll has no black legs and also has white vent as opposed to buffish/yellowish for Bay Breasted), Black throated green (could have been more than one), WB nuthatches, Tufted Titmouse, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Hairy and Downy, Red-bellied Woodpeckers etc. At the edge of the Golf Course, there was a pair of Eastern Bluebirds along with tons of Chipping Sparrows. On the lake, we heard a Belted Kingfisher and saw several DC cormorants, Great Black Backed and Ring-billed Gulls. In spite of wind and cold, we had beautiful blue skies and pleasant conversations till the end of our trip. Cheers Meena Meena Haribal Ithaca NY 14850 webpage: http://meenaharibal.blogspot.com/ http://www.geocities.com/asiootusloe/http://www.geocities.com/asiootusloe/mothsofithaca.htmlhttp://haribal.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/wildwest+trip+August+2007+.pdf Current Loc: 42o 25' 44.48" N, 76o 28' 16.90" W Elev 816 ft or 248.7 m Formerly: 19o 0' 41,65" N, 72o 51' 13.02" E Elev 33 ft or 10m -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES Archives: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
