A Finger Lakes trip

In a five day and four night trip, exactly 5 photos and 2 movies were taken by me -- all at this one spot.  What you see here is so typical of one of our birding trips:  My beloved, supreme birdwatcher George Young, bent over the scope.  Not just any scope mind you!  That lunker is a family heirloom from his mother, purchased before either one of us was born.  (It was a once-in-a-lifetime splurge for her.)  It's not even a birding scope:  It's a Questar, born for the heavens, made for the stars.

Which means that what you see through it is backwards.  We had to get used to that.  In the scope the birds are traveling left to right?  In real life, they're traveling right to left.  However, we quickly found this was not a big handicap.  More problematic was the Questar's tripod, a horrible heavy thing, diffcult to adjust.  (We lived with it for years, and then one of the screws fell off and could not be replaced.)  All praise to Manfrotti, fantastic maker of modern tripods.  Geo purchased a beautiful light easy-to-use Manfrotti tripod, and our birding has been so much more fun ever since. 

Note the white seagull dots on the right horizon

 "This one spot" is the point off Fair Haven passage at the top of Little Sodus Bay, western Cayuga county, New York.  This is the southern shore of Lake Ontario just east of Rochester.  From there you get an excellent view of the two bluffs, Sitts (right) and McIntyres.  

 These remarkable bluffs look man made (or at least caused), but they're not.  They're naturally occurring erosion cliffs.  The steam rising from behind McIntyres is one of those kooky coincidences of location:  It has absolutely nothing to do with the bluff.  It's a Canadian power plant over the horizon.

 While we were here, on our fourth and last day, I tried to video the Long Tailed Ducks.  These used to be called Oldsquaws, a name I still think of them by.  They're one of my favorite ducks with their natty black and white pattern.  I got 2 movies but completely forgot about the wind noise and the dreadful grinding of my camera's zoom feature.  I tried so hard to get their unforgettable calls!  Disappointing!  I've uploaded my second and best video (30 sec) here.  You'll just have to click on the (second) link below if you want to hear the extraordinary song of this beautiful sea duck.

 

image from iNaturalist

Long Tailed Duck   Thirty-two seconds (:32) of a flock's calls, mixed with other bird sounds and a lot of wave washing.  If this doesn't work, do a search on Cornell Lab Macaulay Library, or just go to eBird.