I watched the lake from 8:55 to 11:10 this morning and had a reasonably good day. The winds were only moderate from the west, with no northerly component. The lack of a northerly component typically results in birds averaging further out from shore.
At Goat Island in the afternoon, I tried to find a Lesser Black-backed Gull in response to Shai Mitra's post but came up empty. I was surprised by this as we have often found the first multiples of this species there around this time. The only ducks of note around the falls and upriver to the water intakes were a COMMON MERGANSER and a HOODED MERGANSER. It is just a tad early for the first raft of Scaup, Canvasback, and Redhead that typically arrive around the second or third week of October. Betsy and I had five species of warblers on Goat Island - ORANGE-CROWNED, PARULA, BLACK-THROATED BLUE, BLACK-THROATED GREEN, and YELLOW-RUMPED (several of the latter). An adult PEREGRINE FALCON was on one of the electrical towers in the river just downriver from the north Grand Island bridges, probably one of the pair that nests on the bridge. Lake Ontario from Wilson (numbers are estimated): Common Loon 60 Horned Grebe 3 Canada Goose 85 Mute Swan 2 Green-winged Teal 1 Northern Pintail 6 Red-breasted Merganser 5 Unidentified mergansers (probably Red-breasted) 3 Lesser Scaup 5 Greater Scaup 3 White-winged Scoter 90 BLACK SCOTER 1 adult male Unidentified shorebird 1 (distant but if I had to guess, I would say Red-necked Phalarope - I lost it over the water - perhaps it landed?) PARASITIC JAEGER 1 adult Good birding! Willie ---------- Willie D'Anna Betsy Potter Wilson, NY dannapotterATroadrunner.com http://www.betsypottersart.com -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES Archives: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
