June 1, 2010

Five members journeyed to New York to explore
the riches of Chautauqua County.   

We began our explorations Friday afternoon traversing the Alis-Neys Wells Trail, a portion of Rails to Trails near the town of Seneca.  The trail passes through varied habitat including wetlands.  We had barely begun our walk when we spied some shorebirds.  We quickly went back to our car to retrieve our spotting scopes to confirm our eyeballed id of a Wilson's Phalarope, which we quickly confirmed with the aid of the greater magnification.  How little did we know then how big of a stir seeing that little phalarope would make the next day.  It turned out that the bird was rare for that area at that time of the year. More here . . .