Resources:

Pages of Interest

Our Photo Bulletin Board page provides a space for club members to post photos of birds taken in the Ithaca/ Cayuga Lake Basin area. To post photos, send them to Kevin McGowan who maintains the page.

Cayuga Lake Basin First Records and Arrival Information.

The Loon Watch at Taughannock Falls State Park is an all-volunteer effort to count Common Loons as they migrate south down Cayuga Lake each fall.

Birdwatching Sites in the Cayuga Lake Basin contains descriptions of 13 area birding locales, including hot spots such as Sapsucker Woods, Summerhill, and Myers Point. Written by Matthew Medler, these site summaries also contain links to over 160 species accounts expertly prepared by Kevin McGowan for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's "All About Birds" web site.

The Hawthorn Orchard pages document this Ithaca birding hotspot and migrant trap.

The Ithaca Christmas Bird Count, organized by the Cayuga Bird Club, takes place on January 1every year.

Downloadable Files

Map of Sapsucker Woods at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Map of Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge
Checklist of Birds of the Cayuga Lake Basin - All the birds of the Basin that you can print out on one two-sided sheet of paper, in a handy checklist format. Thanks to Jeff Gerbracht and Matt Medler for putting this together.
Basin Year List is a Microsoft Excel file that contains the Basin checklist plus functions that will keep track of your monthly and yearly species totals

Links of Local Interest

The Cayuga Trails Club (CTC) maintains more than 75 miles of trails through prime bird habitats of all sorts, mainly on the Finger Lakes Trail. The CTC is affiliated with the Finger Lakes Trail Conference which is the coordinating
group for the Finger Lakes Trails System.

Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology provides a wealth of information about birds, an extensive collection of bird sounds and videos, educational opportunities and bird monitoring opportunities.

The Cornell Plantations Path Guide is a guidebook to the Cornell campus's many paths and trails.

eBird lets you enter all your checklists while using your data in an international database of bird populations.

The Finger Lakes Land Trust owns and maintains a number of nature preserves that provide some of our best bird habitats.

www.ithacamaps.org is a GIS project with information about Ithaca, down to individual buildings and trees, from an interactive map application.

Kevin McGowan chronicles some of the area's rarer sightings and tougher IDs on his Bad Photos of Good Birds page.

The Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge is part of the Montezuma Wetlands Complex. It is the scene of the annual Montezuma Muckrace.

The New York DEC Bureau of Public Lands has information about state forests and state parks across the state.

The New York State Ornithological Association provides news of rare sightings and links to bird clubs statewide. It publishes the journal, The Kingbird, serves as the home of the New York State Avian Records Committee (NYSARC), and organized the Atlas 2000 New York State Breeding Bird Atlas project.

Nearby Audubon Societies and Bird Clubs with excellent web sites that have information about Finger Lakes Birding areas, links of local interest and activities: Chemung Valley Audubon Society, the Eaton Birding Society, the Onondaga Audubon Society, and the Rochester Birding Association.

Mailing Lists & Archives

Birdingonthe.net maintains a vast catalog of local and regional mailing lists from around the country and provides searchable archives of recent postings.

Cayugabirds-L, hosted by Cornell University, generates daily sightings of birds in and around the Cayuga Lake Basin as well as lively discussions on bird behavior, identification, habitat, and more. For more information contact list owner Chris Tessaglia-Hymes. Cayugabirds-L is not directly affiliated with the Cayuga Bird Club. The list is not currently archived.

NYSbirds-L, also hosted by Cornell, has the same function as Cayugabirds-L but covers the entire state of New York. List owners are Chris Tessaglia-Hymes and John Askildsen.

GenesseeBirds-L and Oneidabirds-L serve nearby regions that partially overlap the Cayuga Lake area,

Hotlines, Guides & Other Offline Resources

RBA Birdbox
(315) 637-0318 is the official bird sightings hotline of Onondaga Audubon. Transcripts are posted the Cayugabirds-L, Oneidabirds, and GenesseeBirds mailing lists.