At dawn on the spillway I spotted several species but had few good photo opportunities. Among the waterfowl sited were a flock of over 300 Common and Red Breasted Mergansers, 40 Double Crested Cormorants as well as Ring-Billed and Herring Gulls. The best pictures that I got at this location were of an immature Herring Gull. This guy was perched on a rock on the down-stream side of the spillway and according to the rangefinder was 71 yards away.
A peninsula of land that sticks out into the game propagation area near the spillway is called Ford Island. On the north side of this peninsula I saw a flock of over 300 Mergansers, mainly hooded but with a handful of Red-Breasted thrown in for good measure. The Hooded Mergansers were doing a lot of courting displays for the females in the area. Since these critters were doing a lot of bouncing around on the water I chose to video instead of taking still pictures of them. The camera that I use has a respectable video feature that works well through the scope.
Hooded Merganser video #1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj8toZQxmhI
Video #2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnUqy1lAS9Y
Video #3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXYG3-uVNH8
From the spillway I made my way to a place called Miller Ponds which is the site of one of the maintenance garages for state park. In a field just east of the buildings are a few ponds that usually contain waterfowl. As soon as I got out of the truck, the first thing that I spotted was one of the Golden Eagles. This eagle was in a tree about half way through the field. Unfortunately he took off before I could get the camera set up. I did some glassing to see what was around and spotted a second Golden Eagle on the far side of the field from me. He was just perched on a limb of a tree on the edge of the field. I had plenty of time to take many pictures of him and even switch lenses from the 24x to the 40x to attempt some higher zoom shots. I checked the rangefinder and found that the eagle was 474.5 yards from me. Ya gotta love Nikon accuracy.
Swimming in the other ponds were 12 Black Ducks, 2 Pied Bill Grebes and 14 Green Wing Teal as well as the usual Canada Geese. The Black Ducks were the first I’ve seen in PA and I was quite happy about that too. The only problem was that they were more worried about feeding than posing for pictures. I still made an effort to photograph them and checked the distance with the rangefinder which varied from 277-285 yards (they were moving). As I was packing up the truck I heard an odd sound, it’s tough to describe: It wasn’t a goose honk or a duck quack; maybe more like a whistling honk. I had and idea what it was and crouched down beside a large tree to see if I was right. I was right; it was a flock of Tundra Swans!!!! I had plenty of time to count them as they flew over at tree-top height; this was a flight of 48 swans. In addition to their calling I also heard another magical sound, one that can’t be appreciated until you hear it. I heard the whistling of their wings as they flew over. You won’t hear it with single birds or small birds when in large flocks but you will hear it in large flocks of larger birds. The whistle is created as air flows over and through the wings of the birds. This is another of the magical sounds of nature, like the bugle of a bull elk, the cry of a coyote or the grunt of a whitetail. I was having a great day.
After I left Miller Ponds, I made my way to Conneaut Lake, Conneaut swamp and Cambridge Springs but unfortunately found no waterfowl of note. I did see the usual Mallards and Canada Geese though.
My next stop was Woodcock Creek Lake outside of Meadville, PA. I was here in the spring of this year and got my first shots of Double Crested Cormorants. Today however I was in for a much bigger surprise: well over 300 Tundra Swans!!! I was able to park on the causeway of the lake and leisurely take as many pictures as I wanted. The majority of the swans were right on the water’s edge in front of me but because the water was down at least 6 feet below normal this still put them 154-174(from nearest to farthest) yards away from me for the most part. I was amazed at the numbers right in front of me and even tried to take a couple of panorama pictures but because of the swans swimming around they didn’t come out well at all. I nearly filled up my memory card with these swans, before I did though I spotted a small sparrow in a tree about 12 yards away from me. It seemed as if he was just sitting there watching me. So, of course I had to take some shots of him to fill up the card and kill my first camera battery. After I installed a new memory card and fresh battery I decided to move on, I still had a few stops to make and it was after 12 pm already.
The last stop for the day was the Geneva Swamp at Custards. Here I found two goose hunters getting ready to head out for the afternoon. I spent some time talking to them, the younger of the two expressed considerable interest in digiscoping. I gave him all of the information he wanted and warned him of the addiction it causes. While we were talking I was also taking pictures of the 150 Tundra Swans that were here in the swamp with about 40 Canada Geese, ranged at a distance of 178.5 yards. As we talked, we also saw two more flights of Tundra Swans pass overhead. The first flight had 75 swans in it and the second had 86.
What a day I had: 10 different species spotted; 500+ Tundra Swans; a good bit of field testing on a rangefinder (it’s outstanding by the way). I needed this trip more than you know.
The balance of the pictures from this trip can be found in my Picasa album number 14.
http://picasaweb.google.com/richwiz34
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