Andy Mus: 5th May

Up early this morning, which was to be rather a feature of this week come to think of it. We grabbed a coffee in the foyer and drove the short distance up to the Fire House Woods at Braddock Bay, ready for the expected warbler fest! Maybe we'd been building this up a bit too much though. Although there were some nice things to see here, including Warbling Vireo and Northern Flicker, as well as our existing warbler trip trio of Yellow, Yellow-rumped and Palm, there were otherwise thin pickings. OK, so maybe it was not all that easy.

We then drove the short distance along to Island Cottage Woods. This also required some work, but eventually there were some rewards for our efforts. After notching up a few trip ticks like Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Black-and-White Warbler and Blue-grey Gnatcatcher, I eventually scored with four lifers: Swamp Sparrow (not great views though), Magnolia Warbler (brief, but bibrosalo!), Black-throated Green Warbler (also brief) and Brown Creeper (yawn). I also found a Great Crested Flycatcher ("wheep") and tons more Yellow-rumped, including the confiding individual photographed here.

So, a bit of success and we went back to the hotel for a surprisingly crap breakfast! Then out again up to Braddock State Park. The Cranberry Trail was also not dripping with birds, but some fine Red-bellied WPs, Yellowthroat and a tick Least Flycatcher. Back by the raptor count platform we had a useful chat with Luke Tiller who gave us loads of useful gen - thanks Luke. Raptor passage was very slow today (just a few TVs) but other local birds included Northern Harrier, Bald Eagle, Caspian Tern, Brown Thrasher (only one of the trip), Swamp Sparrow, Northern Mockingbird, American Kestrel, Eastern Kingbird, Bonaparte's Gull and Field Sparrow. A Camberwell Beauty (aka Mourning Cloak) was also seen.

One good bit of gen of Luke's was where the nearest shop was for drinks and chocolate, i.e. at the end of the road, so we headed up there, stocked up and looked out onto Lake Ontario. We were somewhat surprised to see loads of Long-tailed Ducks and Red-breasted Mergansers as well as Great Northern Diver and Slavonian Grebe (also known as ... oh forget it, this is an English blog!) I was also interested to see lots of Red Dead-nettle and Ground-ivy, which I presumed were probably introduced weeds. [Googling just now, I presumed right!] After this we went off to check out our planned motel for the night, at Brockport, although we got somewhat misdirected by a roadsign for a B&B which apparently didn't exist.

Anyway, after checking out the motel for the night, which looked fine (and far less fancy and expensive than Rochester), we headed back up to the coast. First stop was a jetty on the north side of Braddock Bay, where we added Forster's and Common Terns (good opportunity to compare them!), along with a pair of Lesser Scaup and a Ring-necked Duck. We then birded the West Spit at the mouth of the bay. Late afternoon and fairly quiet, but we did manage to identify (somewhat by process of elimination) our only Prairie Warbler of the trip, plus two mega-skulky Lincoln's Sparrows, another Luke tip, and a useful one. The next Luke tip was somewhat less spectacular though - he'd told us of three restaurants nearby at Salmon Creek. We ended up a Nick Tahoe's which is apparently legendary for being dangerous, as well as dreadful food. We survived, but the food was very slow in arriving, and rather rubbish. Not only this, but I failed to exploit a perfect opportunity to employ the legendary Rick Andrews beer line (Waitress: "do you want a pitcher of beer"; Customer: "no it's OK, we know what beer looks like"). Feeble of me, I blame lack of sleep.

Eventually, the food arrived, we bolted down what we could stomach, then legged it up to the Owl Woods at dusk. We yomped through the woods to the open area (where they catch raptors for banding, and where we indulged in the apparently traditional pursuit of tripping over the strings...) A guy here told us how there'd been 8-9 Whip-poor-wills the previous night, but these had obviously continued migrating. However, we couldn't really complain on seeing a perched/flying Great Horned Owl, 3+ crazily displaying American Woodcocks, and hearing a single (but ultra-distinctive) burst from a Whip-poor-will. Fantastic stuff. We returned to the car and drove to the motel to crash out.

Trip list 97: lifers 10 today, 15 total.