Birds on the Niagara

Hey so it’s Birds on the Niagara weekend. We live here, so we know our neighborhood birds.

It’s not just the gulls in the river but the golden eye ducks or going to the Lewiston docks to see the pintails.

There are people who live in the Falls who appreciate our birds daily because we celebrate the privilege of living here.

In spring, it is egrets by the hundred, best seen from the lower path accessed from the upper Artpark parking lot. In the first couple weeks of May you might also see sturgeon spawning below the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge.

You can find a complete list of events for Birds on the Niagara here https://bird-niagara.org/ but if you are a cheap, take advantage of free parking and admission to the Cave of the Winds. Tell the parking lot attendant and the ticket seller you are with Birds on the Niagara. Admission is free.

If you are into gulls, there will be bird nerds around with scopes near Three Sisters Island and elsewhere. If you are lucky, someone will point out the difference between a lesser black backed gull and a greater black backed gull.

You might even have a chance to see a glaucous gull or a glacous-winged gull, species seen in Niagara this winter that usually overwinters in California.

If you are really lucky (I haven’t been yet) someone will show you the ever-so-elusive vega gull.

Lucky birders get to see an anhinga or snowy owl. I can count a glaucous but not glaucous winged.

Vega? What the heck is that? It looks like a herring gull but comes from Siberia and has never been seen here before.

OK, I admit the gulls mostly look alike. Still, I strive to tell them apart. Some are easy – ring-billed with its ringed-bill, the gigantic one with the black back, (great black backed) or the smallish one with the black cheek patch, (Bonaparte’s)

Still, they are here, they are ours and they deserve to be celebrate.

While you are on Goat Island, continue counter-clockwise to the Three Sisters Island parking area. Bring birdseed. Feed the chickadees and the titmice. If you are lucky, you might even get a downy woodpecker or a nuthatch.