At dawn this morning (Sunday 11 March) I followed up on Chris Wood's report of a Yellow-headed Blackbird at the Hog Hole, part of Treman Marine State Park by the southwest corner of Cayuga Lake. It was one of thousands of Icterids he and Jessie Barry had seen Saturday evening, and on the off chance that it/they stuck around, I was there from well before sunrise until well after. I found a couple orders of magnitude fewer blackbirds and nothing unusual among those few. Treats for me included a GREAT BLUE HERON flying in, a pair of WOOD DUCKS in the corner of the lake, a singing WINTER WREN in the woods along the creek, a gobbling WILD TURKEY, and the simple fact that there was a dawn chorus of a few AMERICAN ROBINS, NORTHERN CARDINALS, MORNING DOVES, and SONG SPARROWS, plus later singing by TUFTED TITMOUSE, BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE, WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH, and NORTHERN FLICKER, and some DOWNY WOODPECKER DRUMMING.
After breakfast I decided to take advantage of the not-too-strong south winds to see if any raptors might be migrating past Mt Pleasant. I was not alone having this idea. When I arrived at the observatory at 9:45 I found Steve Fast walking along the road. He advised me that I was probably an hour early and continued walking (and picking up litter) toward his favored observation point on the eastern hill with the radio towers. He was half right. There were only local birds for the next half hour. Then a raptor rose from the woods downhill toward Ithaca, the best view all day of a RED-SHOULDERED HAWK. It alternated circling and gliding toward me, but keeping its sunlit side in view as it passed to the west going north-northeast. A few minutes later Gary Kohlenberg arrived simultaneous with a flock of 19 TUNDRA SWANS which flew northwest, passing to our north, beautifully sunlit against the blue, and calling. Bob McGuire showed up soon after, then Stuart Krasnoff and Paul Anderson and later Tim and Anne Marie Johnson and John Confer. At one point there was such a gang that the Cornell Police gently inquired what was going on. In fact we were mostly watching specks on the horizon, mostly local RED-TAILED HAWKS, occasionally TURKEY VULTURES, a COOPER'S HAWK, a ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK, a couple more RED-SHOULDERED HAWKS or candidates. After I'd been there 3 hours, Jay McGowan showed up, and within ten minutes we (me, Jay, Bob & John, the others having left) were watching a GOLDEN EAGLE cruising past at fairly close range. I felt good about finding and identifying the bird as it crossed my view of another Red-shouldered Hawk), but I was still impressed by Jay's sense of when to start looking. We stayed another half hour, during which Steve Fast returned to report that he'd been watching a trio of immature NORTHERN GOSHAWKS cavorting in a valley beyond our view. With no birds to compete with the eagle or the goshawk report we left shortly before 2pm.
--Dave Nutter
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