Birding Report:Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge

Back from Montezuma. A 200 mile round trip from Mansfield. Gary and I had a pretty good day although it wasn't the one we expected.

Last week he saw reports that there were in the neighborhood of 15,000 snow geese on the ponds. A day later the report was that nearly half had moved on. Today we didn't see one damn snow goose! Clearly my fisherman's luck ("You should have been here yesterday!") has been extended to birding.

There were, however, lots of ducks on the water. Black Ducks, Redheads, Canvasbacks, Green-winged Teal, Widgeons, Mallards, Common and Hooded Mergansers, Buffleheads, Shovelers, and Ring-necked Ducks were there. But we nearly didn't see many of these since when we first arrived the gate to the viewing road was closed! A hundred mile drive was nearly for naught because they were working on the road and had closed it to the public.

After a short stop at the (closed) Visitors' Center and the restrooms (blessedly open!) adjacent to the parking lot we headed up state Route 89 to the Audubon Center north of Savannah where we took a short walk around one of the ponds. Then it was back to the Wildlife Refuge to see if they had opened the gate. Nope. So we ate lunch on the Visitors' Center deck hoping some birds would fly over so we could get some birds-in-flight shots. When we finished lunch we were resigned to calling it a day. One more stop at the restrooms and ---HOLY COW! They had opened the gate! You still couldn't drive all the way around the loop and out to Route 89, but you could get to the distant ponds and almost to the road that parallels the NYS Thruway. So off we went--along with about half a dozen other vehicles that happened to be there.

The viewing road has the ponds on one side and the Seneca Canal on the other. While the water levels in the ponds were much lower than they had been last spring (they had been drawn down over the winter in an effort to combat purple loosestrife, an invasive marsh flower species), it was still higher than the canal water. As a result the slightly warmer water of the shallow ponds was pouring through the drain pipes to the canal.

And the carp in the canal wanted to get into those warm ponds in the worse way! Hundreds and hundreds of two foot long fish were trying to jam through a one foot wide pipe. They can't get through since there is a wire mesh grate in the darn thing but it didn't stop them from trying! It was a seething mass of fish flesh! It was a hell of a spectacle rivaling the migration of spawning salmon except think fish built along the lines of sumo wrestlers instead of sprinters.

The canal held the carp. The ponds held the majority of the ducks I listed above in equally huge numbers. And over head wheeled two immature Bald Eagles.

Opening that gate prevented us from having a very disappointing day.

I'll post some pictures after I've gotten to "fix" them a little. The birds, although numerous, were still very far away even for a 300mm lens. Hopefully I'll have a few I deem worth posting. I'll also post the entire species list from today's outing.