As some of you may know, my dear wife was in a serious car accident a few weeks ago. I am happy to say she is recovering and things are looking up. I really needed a day to get out and go birding with all that has been going on in my life. Birding is VERY theraputic
to the mind as many of you are already aware. Today was no exception. So, a friend of mine from the Binghamton area, Ruth Giovannitti, and I decided to head up to find the RED-HEADED WOODPECKER, and PROTHONOTARY WARBLER with success. We also had other neat birds that the Montezuma area has to offer. Our first stop was the intersection of Rte 90 and Popular Ridge Road where many have seen the RED-HEADED WOODPECKER, and, before I could get my scope and bins out of the car, Ruth spotted the bird low on a tree on the lake side of Rte 90 near the road. The bird was foraging and moving quite a bit so it was hard to get decent digiscope images but I finally managed a couple: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davenicosia/5885434041/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/davenicosia/5885433069/ He gave a tremendous views that did not even need binoculars at times. It worries me that he is so close to the road with cars and trucks whizzing by so fast. Let's hope nothing happens to this special bird. Next stop was Armitage Road and, at first, no sign of the prothontary warbler. But we heard a CERULEAN WARBLER fairly close and Ruth spotted it high up in the canopy affording a nice view of this warbler. Then after a few minutes we heard the distinct zweet, zweet, zweet, zweet, zweet song of the PROTHONOTARY WARBLER. BUT he was deep in the woods so we were unfortunately not able to track him down to see. But the bird still remains but is not singing as much as others have experienced. We did not hear the other one that was reported. >From East Road, we saw a decent amount of waterfowl species including BLUE-WINGED TEAL, GREEN-WINGED TEAL, AMERICAN WIDGEON, MALLARD and BLACK DUCK. There was also a CASPIAN TERN among two RING-BILLED GULLS. In addition we had 1 BLACK TERN coarsing low over the marshes. We also saw several YELLOWLEGS (probably GREATER, but they were very distant). No other shorebirds were found at this distance except for KILLDEER. >From May's Point, there were many GREAT BLUE HERONS, 3 GREAT EGRETS and 1 COMMON MOORHEN. We also had 1 PIED-BILLED GREBE. >From Tschache Pool, we saw an AMERICAN BITTERN fly by toward May's Point. What a great day. It is good to be back birding again!!! Dave Nicosia Johnson City, NY -- 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/[email protected]/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/ --
