Starting the Day with Snow Geese

I was guiding in northern Franklin and St. Lawrence counties this past weekend and we started by looking through the thousands of snow geese which were populating the landscape around Malone. Lines of snow geese laced the sky, shifting in layers above our heads and looking a little like a video game full of attacking bombers. Many of the geese on the ground were distant in the fields, so we scanned through the ones we could see well from the roadside, hoping we might luck into a Ross's goose, but we didn't find any.

We went to the Malone Recreation Park to see the geese crammed into its waters -- we expected to have an easier time finding a Ross's there -- but the pond at the center of the park had been drained and there were only a handful of gulls and Canada geese on the remaining small, muddy pool. That explained why the snow geese were flying everywhere above us!

A Rough-legged Hawk

We gave up on the geese and began to work through the farm roads north and west of Malone, our efforts there highlighted by a beautiful rough-legged hawk along county Route 8. A brief stop at the Franklin County Landfill in Westville yielded a few gulls and we raced west to check out Robert Moses State Park, located just over the county line in St. Lawrence County. There are many places to explore at Robert Moses and we began at Hawkins Point and its view of the power dam.

It was quiet at the dam itself, but we found a red-tailed hawk (one of a few we saw that day) along the power lines. As we explored the edge of the cattail-lined ponds and pools which sit strung beneath the lines we spooked an enormous white-tailed buck from the brush. We watched him run away sporting what appeared to be a 10-point rack. The ponds held a cluster of hooded mergansers and a couple gadwall -- always a nice duck to see. Further along the road we found a string of common mergansers as well as more hooded mergs before turning our attention to a small strip of water below us from the road where a great blue heron, mallards, American black ducks, and a good number of gadwall were feeding.

Ducks along the St. Lawrence

We drove on to scan the St. Lawrence River near the Long Sault Dam and found a lot of activity near the park's marina. The far-off islands in the river were populated with many, many gulls. We scanned through them to see if any white-winged gulls had arrived yet, but found none at such a great distance. One of the islands was the chosen resting site for two adult bald eagles, which occasionally took to the air to see if they could catch any of the ducks unawares. After all, ducks were scattered across the river and what had appeared to be a quiet body of water was populated by more ducks than it first appeared. Many of them were common goldeneye and red-breasted mergansers -- a duck I always enjoy seeing and one that is much more common along the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario than it is along Lake Champlain -- and we soon found bufflehead, horned grebes, common loons, and a lone long-tailed duck mixed in with a group of goldeneye.

We moved to a few more viewpoints along the river and found similar fare -- we also spotted a lingering northern flicker and a flock of pine siskins in the surrounding woodlands. After a quick stop at Hawkins Point to see if anything had arrived there, we headed west along the St. Lawrence. We found a number of bufflehead at Hopsons Bay and ended our day at Wilson Hill Wildlife Management Area, where there were scattered ducks visible on the pools as night fell upon us with a beautiful sunset.

Late fall and early winter make for good birding as waterfowl and other species move south. Check out our outdoor recreation, dining, and lodging pages to learn more!