By Gary Lee
This month is flying by. Of course we had another quick January thaw; luckily it lasted only a few hours bringing just a little rain before changing to snow.
I just came back from the eastern Adirondacks and Lake Champlain where there is very little snow.
They got a few inches of rain and freezing rain out of the storm that came up the coast.
The culverts and ditches over that way are frozen and water is running over several of the side roads.
It was about zero this morning and those roads were like skating rinks with the water still running in many places.
I had a program at the Great Swamp Conservancy just outside of Canastota on Sunday, January 18.
It had just started raining when we left there and it rained all the way back to Old Forge.
It looked different downstate. They had freezing rain that iced up roads and caused multiple pileups.
Someone got smart and closed part of the Thruway down that way and saved a few more messes on the highway.
I went over to Lake Champlain for the duck count early Monday morning (1/19). The snowplows weren’t out yet so it was not a fun ride.
It was snowing like a blizzard from here to Newcomb, so I never went over 40 all the way.
Then I got to follow a plow to the Blue Ridge Road turn off, ducking a couple log trucks on that road that wasn’t plowed yet.
Luckily the Northway was almost clear and dry but when I turned off to go to the Essex Ferry Dock the roads weren’t sanded yet and were a sheet of ice.
I almost turned around in Long Lake just as the snow slowed a bit but continued on and made it.
I met my friend Tom Barber who came across on the first ferry of the day from Vermont. The day turned out great. We counted ducks bare handed all day and sometimes didn’t wear coats either.
The temperature went down throughout the day but the wind didn’t start blowing until our very last stop at Port Kent, up near Keeseville.
After we finished the count, I stopped and took a couple pictures of Ausable Chasm that was coated with ice over the falls.
I had other groups counting the ducks on other parts of the lake on Saturday and Sunday (1/17 and 1/18).
Bill Krueger counted from the Canadian Border down to Cumberland Bay which was mostly frozen. He didn’t find many ducks as they don’t do well on ice, but he did get a few.
Ellie George, Glen and Malinda Chapman and Stacey Robinson did from the outlet of Lake George to Westport on Lake Champlain. A lot of that area was also frozen and they got most of their ducks right at the Westport Boat Launch.
One special duck they found there was a Pintail which I had never seen in Essex County so Tom and I made that our first stop on Monday morning. We found the duck along with about a thousand mallards, which wasn’t easy.
We saw some birds along the way that didn’t get included in the count: 19 bald eagles, 13 black-backed gulls, 400 ring-billed gulls, 5 herring gulls, 2 Bonaparte’s gulls (Tom saw these while coming over on the ferry), 3 cock pheasants at a feeder, 30 turkeys and many hawks and song birds.
We had 5,303 total birds on the duck count, which was a few less than we’ve had in the last few years. Counted were: Canada goose-1,321, wood duck–2, American black duck-100, mallard duck–2,377, northern pintail–1, ring-necked duck–16, scaup (not to species)–6, Bufflehead–94, common goldeneye–814, hooded merganser–7, common merganser–546 red-breasted merganser–5, common Loon–4 and horned grebe–10.
As you can see there were mallards all over the place where normally we see a few hundred. We usually get a few thousand goldeneye, but not this year. Some said they were all over on the Vermont side of the lake so maybe they will get counted over there this year.
I stayed at my brother Bob’s overnight. He wanted me to go ice fishing this morning but I had to get back. He was out of the house at six this morning…I hope they were biting.
The trip home was much more enjoyable as the roads were clear and dry—except for the Blue Ridge Road where I met several log and chip trucks hauling their loads east.
Debris in the woods…but that’s another story. See ya.