The highlight of the past weekend for me was helping lead a birding trip for The Wild Center to Lake Champlain. We had a great group of participants, and began our day in light snow as we drove to Westport. Although the overcast skies stayed on us the entire day, we dodged the worst of the snow showers, and visibility had significantly improved by the time we reached Westport.
We started there at the boat launch where a nice collection of ducks was assembled on the water. Many of the flocks were distant, but we scanned through them and we had good views of the birds in the close flocks. Species there included common goldeneye, greater and lesser scaup, mallard, American black duck, bufflehead, common merganser, and a lone female hooded merganser. There was also a very cooperative common loon feeding just off the boat launch area, and I have since learned that the bird had been locked in by the ice on Lake George and it and a few other loons had been moved to open water by biologists from the Biodiversity Research Institute.
We also had three or four eagles flying overhead or in the distance. One of these eagles spooked up the congregation of gulls sitting on the small sandbar at the water treatment facility where Hoisington Brook enters the lake. So when we went there to check that area out, there were fewer gulls remaining than there would have been. The flock consisted of the most common species of gulls – ring-billed, herring, and great black-backed. I had seen both Iceland and glaucous gulls there two weeks before, but not on this day. We did, however, find a lone female red-breasted merganser swimming off shore, and there was another of those relocated loons.
We dropped south to some of the field lined roads south of Westport where we found five bald eagles sitting in white pines overlooking the lake off Barber Road. There were also hundreds of ducks in Cole Bay along Dudley Road. Most of them were a mix of greater and lesser scaup, but the flock also included many common goldeneye, black ducks, mallards, and common mergansers. We also found a few more hooded mergansers and a large contingent of ring-necked ducks, one of my favorites.
On Napper Road, my coleader spotted a rough-legged hawk perched on the tiny branches high in a tree across a field, and the bird gave us a nice show in the air before taking off in the direction we were headed. We found it again soon thereafter, as well as a nice flock of songbirds along the way. We also discovered a few eastern bluebirds and American goldfinches – the first goldfinches I've seen in the North Country in a few months. Both birds are a sign of the approaching spring.
As we worked our way north of Westport, the fields along both Clark and Cross Roads produced a gliding red-tailed hawk and the impressive array of bird feeders there had attracted a great diversity of birds including a red-bellied woodpecker. Then it was back to some points on the lake again where Whallon Bay had a pair of gadwall mixed in with a flock of mallards, and the American coot which I had found two weeks before was still hanging out at the Essex Ferry terminal. Another bald eagle flew overhead there, sending the large group of mallards and black ducks into the air – no one wants to be a sitting duck (sorry, I couldn't resist) for an opportunistic eagle.
We drove north to Noblewood Park in Willsboro, where the woods were silent, but there was a very large flock of ducks on the water. They were mostly common goldeneye and both species of scaup, but the birds were extremely skittish and flew all over the place at our arrival. We never found anything odd in their midst as a result, but it was impressive to see their numbers in the air.
We then began to wind our way home, finding another red-tailed hawk and a ruffed grouse along the way, bringing us to a total of 42 species on the day. And as we began to climb back up towards Keene and Lake Placid, the steady snow showers resumed as if they had never stopped all day. That's good weather for the skiers, and it was good timing for our birding adventure.
