I missed the Dawn Chorus yesterday because I was out birding. The Cayuga Bird Club had a field trip to Montezuma which included an opportunity to go out on the normally off limits dike at Knox-Marcellus marsh.
More below the squiggle.
I started the day at the Van Dyne Spoor marsh in Savannah, NY. The only other person there must have been someone from the Refuge. They were driving down an off limits service road...
Mallard? Black Duck? I can't tell. The one in the back is a Shoveler.
Black-crowned Night Heron.
There is a pair of Trumpeter Swans at Van Dyne Spoor. There are several pairs in the Montezuma complex. Thank you Provence of Ontario for reintroducing them to the east.
A pair of Northern Shovelers and something else. A Mallard I think.
Pied-billed Grebe
Mallards and Teal
There was a Red-tailed Hawk on one of the power poles, but he was back-lit so I didn't get any good shots. He flew off as I drove by...
Great Blue Heron
This Common Gallinule has a story to tell. It is missing half its bill and has a wound on its neck. Was it a Peregrine Falcon or a Bald Eagle?
I met up with the Cayuga birders at the Montezuma NWR Visitor Center, then we took the Wildlife Drive on the way to Knox-Marcellus. The only birds visible for most of the drive were several species of swallow in large numbers. But after sitting there for a few minutes a large number of ducks spooked out of the reeds...
Green-winged Teal
American Black Duck? Edit: I now think these are female Pintail.
Mallards
At Knox-Marcellus there are a very large number of migratory shore birds, but even on the off limits dike they are very far away.
Gulls & Terns
I can identify the two types of Yellowlegs. Everything else to me is just a Peep...
The other birders had scopes and were calling out different species and would get excited about some of the rare ones. All I could see with my 7x35 binoculars were little brown shapes...My camera has a 300mm lens and a 1.4x tele-converter, but I still have to crop from 16MP to 1MP to isolate a bird.
A plover of some sort?
Some of the other birders were excited about the bigger bird with these Peeps. I can't remember what they said it was...
A bird that should not be here. Peterson says they are "Casual" east to the coast...
One has been a Knox-Marcellus all summer. A second arrived last week.
The Peeps were nervous most of the time we were there because there was a Merlin in the area...
Yellowlegs in flight.
Great Egrets are just a bit bigger than Peeps...
The coloring marks this Norther Harrier as a juvenile.
It caused a minor disturbance among the Black-crowned Night Herons...
I was told this is a Whimbrel. All I could see was a brown spot in the grass.
On the way out I spotted a Monarch in the Goldenrod. I have only seen a few this year so it was a nice way to end the day.
Unfortunately the road to Knox-Marcellus, really just a National Grid right of way, took it's toll on my car. Just as a pulled out of the NYS Thruway toll booth my resonator pipe decided to develop a hole...I should have know something would go wrong, there were two black cats in the road when I arrived at Van Dyne Spoor.