Sunday, January 29, 2012

Birding Muskegon County Saturday

.
Brian Allen from the Manistee area posted this on Mich-Chat today:
.
After missing one trip due to a virus attack and hearing about good birds in Muskegon one time too much I decided to splurge on gas and Tim Granger and I headed down there yesterday during what we believed to be a break between winter storms.  We had heard about the Short-eared, Snowy Owls, Snow Geese seen yesterday as well as previous reports on the White-fronted Goose, Golden Eagle and the Purple Sandpipers out at the pier, not to mention all the gulls you could want at the landfill.

Our first stop was at the Short-eared Owl spot, no luck but cool to see flocks of Horned Larks and a Rough-legged Hawk there.  We headed over to the waste water ponds (all frozen now) and studied the thousands of gulls at the dump which appeared to all be Herring Gulls. There were also 5 Bald Eagles adult and imm. here.  Out on the ice was another large group of several hundred gulls including a first yr. Iceland Gull.  We headed to the north side where the Snowy Owls and Geese had been seen but alas there were only a couple hundred Canada Geese and nothing else.  Some what dejectedly we decided to make the thousand stoplight journey over to Pere Marquette park in hope of seeing the surviving Purple Sandpipers.

Winds were now gale force and no sensible humans were out by the pier so we decided to get out there and give it an idiotic try.  We were in luck, near the base two Purple Sandpipers were huddling close to each other avoiding the crashing waves and ice on the outer pier where we were afraid they might be.  Also there were hundreds and hundreds of ducks very close into shore like I have seen on previous stormy days on the big lake.  First we saw a Horned Grebe then a small group of White-winged Scoters including a very confiding female Black Scoter surfing the waves.  We went out almost to the elbow of the pier where the waves and ice made it too difficult and at the point was a juv./female Harlequin Duck!  There were hundreds of Long-tailed Ducks, Common Mergansers and Common Goldeneyes also seen before our eyelids froze.

We thawed out on the way back to Swanson Rd. to try again for the SEOW, again no luck just a nice Northern Shrike. We drove some tough drifted in mucky two tracks but could not find the owl.  We headed back to the WWT ponds going on the north side this time and saw a gorgeous adult Golden Eagel on the power line that let us stop and visually burn his image into our brains.  We had seen some more geese flying into the north and when we got there saw 2 Snowy Owls, one very speckled and dark and the other almost entirely white.  Nothing new with the geese.  We headed back for one more shot at the Short-eared Owl as it was appropriatley crepuscular now just before 6:00 PM.  Again no luck, too windy?  Anyway a very enjoyable day despite the previous day departure of gees and the extra 200 pounds of carbon dioxide we liberated on the trip.

BA 
.

No comments: