Blue Goose ~ Day 70

August 9, 2014 ~ Canandaigua, NY to Auburn, NY

I worked awhile in the morning and left at 1100 heading for Montezuma NWR. I still was on main roads (but not the NY Thruway) which were slow and busy (US5 and US20). I turned north to be able to go through Phelps, NY, passing fields of ripe cabbage which emitted a faintly unpleasant odor but gave the town reason to have an annual Sauerkraut Festival. (Stephen and I had stopped here once before, a long time ago, returning from an Ottenhoff visit.) The town was representative of most of the places I've been driving through, with several gorgeous old houses near the center of the town. I love the old homes which were built with stones of different sizes mortared together.

Montezuma is just outside of Seneca Falls, NY.

EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women's rights convention.^[1] It advertised itself as "a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman".^[2]Held in Seneca Falls, New York, it spanned two days over July 19–20, 1848. Attracting widespread attention, it was soon followed by other women's rights conventions, including one in Rochester, New York two weeks later. In 1850 the first in a series of annual National Women's Rights Conventions met in Worcester, Massachusetts. Female Quakers local to the area organized the meeting along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was not a Quaker. They planned the event during a visit to the area by Philadelphia-based Lucretia Mott. Mott, a Quaker, was famous for her oratorical ability, which was rare during an era which women were often not allowed to speak in public.

I saw a beautiful, brightly painted sign and thought it was for the refuge until I saw it was a winery. If I hadn't been traveling alone, I/we would have stopped for sure.

I got to Montezuma 15 minutes before the Visitor Center closed and talked a little with the lady in the gift shop. Pete Dunne's large descriptive book on birds was on the bookshelf. There were also two women getting information. Their native language was not English but one of them was translating. They weren't speaking French, Spanish, Italian or German so I was curious.

The VC overlooks a huge marsh (or pool as nearly all these "wet soil impoundments" are called.) I started on the auto route and was happy to note I wasn't the only visitor for once. In fact, in the three hours I was on this refuge, I saw at least two dozen other vehicles and many were birders with binoculars spending time scanning the wetlands, creeping along in their cars, and often parking and peering into the marshes. I stopped almost immediately and sat for an hour with the windows open. On one side were marsh reeds and grasses and cattails, equally mixed in with thousands of showy pink Swamp Rose-mallow flowers.

Swamp Rose-mallow - Montezuma NWR - NY

On the other side was more open water with a very occasional bird moving about. I watched what I thought was a Marsh Wren grooming itself but not vocalizing and too far to positively ID, a few Wood Ducks in the distance and then I noticed a large plump grayish bird also seriously preening, preening, preening. It was a juvenile Common Gallinule which stayed in the same spot for most of the time I watched. There was an Osprey perched on a dead branch farther along the route and many GB Herons. And shorebirds, although silhouetted by the late afternoon sun and difficult to ID. Most were Lesser Yellowlegs but there were a few other species also, along with Pied-billed Grebes and Caspian Terns with their "blood red" bills, uncommon here according to the refuge list. Finally, some birds!

I know I perseverate on insects, but again, there were none!

The New York State Thruway bisects the refuge so at one point we were moving directly parallel to heavy traffic, separated only by high security barbed wire fencing. It was the perfect time to be on a refuge; I have often been arriving in he middle of the day, and all the pamphlets say the same thing: the best chance for viewing wildlife is dawn or dusk...the crepuscular time of day.

I walked a mile-long trail along a river, passing right under another osprey on a nest....the only sounds a distant hum of traffic but otherwise totally peaceful.

Montezuma worked with Cornell and introduced biologic (beetles and weevils) controls for invasive purple loosestrife in July of 1997. That program has been very successful in keeping this pretty invader from replacing native flora.

Purple Loosestrife at Iroquois NWR - NY

Auburn was only 12 miles east so I stayed there for the night, parking near a large RV, half-watching the owners move around inside. I had stopped at a Wegmans grocery store near Rochester earlier just to buy a NY state map and could have spent a day in that store! I only wandered through the produce and deli but it was a renaissance fair of food, and I had to leave before I spent way too much money. I tried some asparagus and peppers lightly coated with a "basting oil," wrapped in foil and heated on a grill that were the best I've ever tasted, so I bought the oil, along with a dark chocolate candy bar, an apple and some postcards...and the map. Faith, when / if it works out that I visit you, we need to do some veggies this way.

And I bought delicious shrimp / veggie sushi rolls with a dipping sauce which I had for dinner.