93 SPECIES IN JANUARY!!

WOW! What a month! I finished the month of January today with a trip to Cane Ridge/Tern Bar Slough, Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife Area and the Newburgh, IN Lock and Dam. I added 3 new species to the list increasing the already record count to 93 species. Today's trip added Greater Scaup, Peregrine Falcon and Herring Gull.
The trip to Cane Ridge National Wildlife Refuge ended with 56 species. My home count this morning was 24 species and I added another 14 at the lock and dam. Total species for the day was 64. Not bad for the last day of January.
One of the most interesting observations for the day occurred at Cane Ridge/Tern Bar Slough where the waterfowl numbers have crashed over the past 14 days. On the 17th Steve Gifford and I counted over 100,000 geese, ducks and other waterfowl. Today we would have been lucky to count 2,000. There is so much open water in the tri-state area that waterfowl have their pick for resting and feeding. When you factor in that there is open water almost all the way to the Michigan border, there is very little reason for waterfowl to congregate in small areas right now. It really is fascinating how populations can fluctuate this time of year.
The highlights of today's trip were the number of Bald Eagles continuing at Cane Ridge/Tern Bar Sloughs. Today I found 5 adult Bald Eagles and 3 juvenile eagles. I also got to observe an adult Bald and adult Golden Eagle sharing a tree at Tern Bar Slough. There seemed to be some discussion going on concerning who got there first and the Bald Eagle decided to take his argument elsewhere. Go Goldie!
The second highlight for the day was watching an adult Peregrine Falcon take a lunch break at the Newburgh, IN Lock and Dam, on the Ohio River. I no sooner arrived at the park when all of the Rock Pigeons came off the dam and starting scattering in all directions. I have seen that behavior enough times to know what was coming next and he didn't disappoint. In a matter of seconds the falcon came rocketing through the mass of pigeons and succeeded in grabbing one unlucky fellow. The falcon then tried hard to get the bagged lunch back to it's perch atop the light standard at the locks and had a very difficult time flying into the wind. He finally succeeded and settled down for his hard-earned meal.
Lots of fun things still going on in the tri-state!!