Today, I freed up by noon, and headed out toward Orient Point County Park to try to find the Snowy Owl found by John Sep earlier this week. With the advent of a C.Raven in flight over the intersection of Northville Turnpike & Route 105 before leaving Riverhead, my hopes were high for viewing *Bubo scandiacus *! Although I missed it at the "Point" (and later at Orient Point State Park, as well) the following seasonal species were recorded: C.Loon; C.Eider; Long-tailed Duck; White-winged Scoter; Red-breasted Merganser and Snow Bunting. While at the state park, a Merlin was busily trying to connect with a meal !
This year's annual meeting, NYSOA's 70th, set attendance records for both the conference and the banquet dinner, whose keynote speaker's presentation, entitled "An Accidental Big Year", was outstanding. Neal Heyward's humorous telling and showing of his ABA record setting 749 species in 2013, is almost beyond comprehension, when you factor in his late start at the beginning of April, and the almost 250,000 miles he had to travel ! Next year's annual meeting is scheduled for October 5-7, 2018 in Rochester, and with Derby Hill as one of its birding hotspots, should be an outstanding meeting too ! Brendan Fogarty and I spent 4 days driving to, attending, and returning from, the above meeting. Brendan (a phone/gps whiz) routed out ~ 15 stops along the way, which produced < 90 > species* for the trip, highlighted by the 52 Sandhill Cranes we saw in the same field (part of the Greater Montezuma Refuge Area) in Savannah. This was Brendan's first annual meeting, and his participation is fairly unique. He started birding at age 9, at age 14 he was part of the first group of NYSYBC members, and now, 10 years later, is still part of the club as an Adult Sponsor. He also was voted in as member of NYSOA's Board of Directors at this past weekend's delegate meeting - way to go Brendan ! Cheers, Bob *Includes birds seen at conference -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
