What a weekend for birding and bird photography at Presque Isle State Park! So much content it couldn’t be contained in one, two, or even three posts! Wow.
After a sunny start, Sunday quickly turned cloudy, remaining mostly overcast the rest of the day. Moderate high temps (28-30 deg F), but windy. Not bad in sheltered locations, but the wind chill on the back bay: once again brutal.
Roads at Presque Isle State Park in pretty good shape. Main bicycle/walking trail also in pretty good shape (mostly ice-free).
First up, a stop at Long Pond. Plenty of duck and geese activity on the unfrozen west end.
Lots of honking and other goose shenanigans:
Admittedly, easily amused here at BirdingPI.com, but it was still pretty funny.
Next, back to the Perry Monument area. (Q. How do you know the weather conditions are bad at Perry Monument? A. When there’s no one else out mid-day on a weekend, except folks huddled in cars.) Lots of ducks on the water and lots of ducks in flight. Amazing day for duck activity! A few representative shots:
Before heading out for the day, it was time to enjoy the view from the car while waiting for extremities to regain feeling. What else comes floating into view but a gull-festooned piece of float ice, moving easterly at a brisk clip in the wind (right-to-left in the picture below). Facing the wind and thereby moving backwards, the gulls soon exited ‘stage left’ as the float ice moved further down the bay and behind a screen of trees. The picture below doesn’t do it justice (and not the right time/conditions for video), but still ‘lol’ (literally) funny.
As always, fun to see the various birds. The gulls riding backwards on the floe were really fun to see!