by Gary Lee
We have had a couple ups and downs weather-wise. First came the cold, then snow got things rolling. Then we had a warming trend with freezing rain and south winds that knocked back what snow we had.
Then we went back down to zero with a little more snow for the Martin Luther King holiday.
The free snowmobiling for the weekend deal got a lot of people out on the trails. They had many places right down to the dirt even before the warming temperatures came through.
The changes in weather brought some different birds to my feeder. I had a male cowbird, a couple more juncos, and just yesterday two titmouse—the first of those I’ve had in several years.
I caught a northern shrike that was after my birds in the potter trap. I put a band on him and only got nipped once.
There have been some red crossbills eating grit in the Limekiln and South Shore Roads.
One day there were about thirty in the Limekiln Road but on Sunday (1/17) I only saw seven. Too much traffic kept them out of the road.
While conducting a waterfowl count on Lake Champlain last Friday I saw flocks of turkeys in Raquette Lake, Long Lake, Newcomb, and Blue Ridge Road.
The largest I saw was a flock of fifty or more going from the Northway over to Willsboro.
While traveling in the rain and freezing rain the next day we saw small flocks all along the shoreline of Champlain.
I started the waterfowl count at my brother Bob’s place on Willsboro Point and it was so icy you could skate on the roads off the main road.
I picked up Tom Barber at the Essex Ferry Dock at 7:30 a.m. and we started counting ducks.
We went south along the shoreline as it was mostly rain and the roads weren’t slippery.
We went down to Whallon Bay where there were some good ducks and a couple bald eagles sitting in a tree along the shoreline.
Tom told me there were thousands of ducks down by the Crown Point Bridge to Vermont. One of our other teams was counting there.
At the bay we got our first loon and horned grebe along with a few rafts of ducks.
We retraced our tracks back to the ferry landing and counted north from there to Port Kent and Wickham Marsh.
On the way north we went around the Magic Triangle which was all dirt roads that you could skate on.
We saw a few red-tailed hawks and several song birds including lots of robins, cardinals, juncos and tree sparrows.
Our first stop was at Noblewood Park in Willsboro where we counted a few ducks and several gulls.
We did Willsboro Point next and the rain had stopped. We picked up a few loons and three horned grebes along with the ducks and Canada geese.
We had lunch out on the west side of the point and caught a common merganser eating a large perch.
He had to dive down and recapture the fish several times before he got it going the right way and down the hatch.
At the Willsboro boat launch we got five more geese and our only ring-necked ducks.
The lake was all open water except from the Crown Point Bridge south so the birds could be anywhere in the lake.
Next, we went cross lots to Port Douglas where there was a big flock of 23 mallards and a raft of 135 goldeneyes.
Going further north to Port Kent we picked up another pair of loons and a few other ducks.
We could see there were a lot more to the north at our next and last stop off Wickham Marsh.
We got up on the railroad tracks only to look north to see the south-bound passenger train blowing its whistle.
Of course, the ducks went further out in the lake.
The food must have been good there as they came flying back in where we could see and count them better through the scope.
Tom kept seeing a Barrow’s goldeneye, but every time I looked through the scope he took a dive.
I finally did get a good look at him. It was the only one we saw among the over 1,000 common goldeneyes. There were 20 bufflehead there among the goldeneye.
I took a few pictures of the frozen marsh from the tracks as the sun finally tried to poke through the clouds.
We stopped at Ausable Chasm where you could skate on the sidewalks on the bridge over the chasm.
I took a few pictures upstream as the mist was frozen to the trees above the falls.
Another group—Judy Heintz, Bill Krueger and Paul Osenbaugh—did from the Canadian border south past Plattsburgh.
Bill also did Clumberland Head where he got five snow geese and a gadwall, which was a late sighting for Clinton County.
Ellie George, Stacy Robinson, Nina Schoch, and Malinda and Glen Chapman were to our south from Westport to Ticonderoga.
Waterfowl seen on the count were 14 common loons—6 on Schroon Lake, Snow Geese -16, Canada Geese -149, black duck -413, Mallard – 2,862, Mallard Hybrid – 2, canvasback – 14, redhead – 8, ring-necked duck – 24, lesser scaup – 22, not to scaup species – 1,284, white-winged scooter – 19, bufflehead – 119, common goldeneye – 6,118, Barrow’s goldeneye – 2, hooded merganser – 23, common merganser – 4,182, red-breasted merganser – 16, horned grebe – 28, double crested cormorant – 7, American coot – 4, gadwall – 1, and red-necked grebe – 1 for a total of 15,338 waterfowl counted.
The Backyard Bird Count is coming up…but that’s another story. See ya.