Greetings,

Today with a few hours to kill, my wonderful girlfriend and I made a trip over to Coxsackie in Greene County in search of winter gulls and raptors. As posted earlier, I made the trip on Tuesday with mediocre results. While today was not a complete success with target birds, it was pretty stellar overall, and well worth the trip.

Our first stop was the Coxsackie Boat Launch where a large raft of gulls greeted us on several ice flows across from the ice-covered parking lot. It is always hit-or-miss if they will be there resting on the river or at the nearby prison feeding, so the fact that this number of gulls were present at all was exciting. Unfortunately, without a scope, the inviting flock was a bit too distant to identify all the species present other than RING-BILLED, HERRING, and GREAT BLACK-BACKED. Regardless, within a few minutes we were able to detect several individual white-winged gulls, but as mentioned above, they were too far away, even through binoculars, to identify them as Iceland or Glaucous.

At this point we left and headed north to Kalkberg Rd. and the Serta Factory to search for the previously reported Snowy Owl and Northern Shrike. We were greeted there by two birders from the Kingston area who quickly got my girlfriend Betsi and I on the Snowy Owl nearby.  Across the grasslands was a tall, flat-topped Save-a-lot building, which the owl had decided to hang out on top of for the time being. Although distant, its silhouette was unmistakable; nevertheless, we wanted a closer look. We then left the birders and headed over to the Save-a-lot grounds to get a closer view, but none were to be found. Not disappointed, we then headed back to the Serta factory to re-search for the reported shrike that the Kingston birders had at their arrival. That was not found either.

With snow flurries flying, we planned out the remaining hours of the afternoon by assessing our wants: to get better looks of the owl, find the shrike, and get identifying looks at Iceland and Glaucous Gulls. We decided at this point to retry the gulls at the boat launch with hopes that they managed to work their way closer to the shoreline. Upon our arrival we found the gulls much, much closer, and, with a visitor providing a community snack, we had the fortune of several of the feeding gulls staying close to the vehicle. Within a few minutes of Ring-billed Gulls taking handouts as expected, a single juvenile ICELAND GULL decided to join them and allowed for my (Betsi’s making me put “our”, hers is on the bottom) our best photographs of this species to date.

After twenty minutes of watching the Iceland Gull in close, a lone GLAUCOUS GULL made a flyby appearance before settling down within a large mixed flock of Herring and Ring-billed Gulls. This is the second time that I’ve been able to mark off these two species at this site at one time.  High noon light was fading into an early dusk, so my girlfriend and I decided to make one last attempt for the owl and shrike (after lunch). After having our fill of lobster and prime rib, we headed once again to the Serta factory where we found a birder looking through a scope. At this point I quickly scanned the field to find a white lump atop a snow-covered mound. SNOWY OWL! We jumped out and prepared to introduce ourselves to the birder with the scope, however introductions were short as we happened to all know each other already. Larry Federman made quick order to get the scope on the owl, and it was much closer than we had ever hoped to find it today. Even though the wind had some bite to it, 15 minutes of watching the owl went fast, and I was able to get a few quick shots of the owl through Larry’s scope. Thanks again Larry! Apparently, this is the second year in a row that a young Snowy Owl was found within this grassland complex.

With the wind picking up, all three of us decided it was time to head off for warmer venues. Larry mentioned of a spot to look for Short-eared Owls on the way home which we followed him to, but it was too early for the owls and none were found. We decided at this point the day was over. All in all, it was truly a great day to be out, and with snow flakes in the air it really added to the effect of observing such great northern birds like Snowy Owl, Iceland Gull, and Glaucous Gull. Unfortunately, we missed a few of our targets (Northern Shrike for one) but there are always other times. Thanks once again to Richard Guthrie and Larry Federman for their warm welcomes on such a cold day.

Bird on!
Chad