Saturday evening I realized that the forecasted cloudiness before the storm was not entirely accurate and that some beautiful light was streaming in my window.  So I jumped in my car and drove over to Papscanee Island hoping that the light would last.  It did, but all of my decent photo-ops were on the wrong side of the road!

So I did what I could shooting against the sun and got lousy pics.  Then I realized that all the lumps on the side of the road were Wilson’s Snipe.  The sun went behind the clouds and I got this:

 

Not wonderful, but better than the last time I posted about snipe.  Here it is again, zoomed in a bit and cropped more:

Twenty-one snipe revealed themselves to me but I am sure that there were more.  I also spotted my first local Greater Yellowlegs of the year and, always a pleasure to see, Wood Ducks.

Today after work I stopped over at Papscanee and was amazed at how much things can change in 48 hours, especially when that 48 hours is filled with nor’easter.  The low-lying fields that had been muddy and wet were now ponds.  The ponds that had formed from melting snow had joined together to form veritable lakes.  And the bird life was almost completely different.

No waders of shorebirds of any kind but many more gulls than I have ever seen at Papscanee.  Most of them were Ring-billed Gulls, which are usually there in small numbers, but today there were hundreds.  I also spotted a group of about 15 Herring Gulls and a single Great Black-backed Gull.  The only waterfowl were several pairs of Mallards and a couple small flocks of Canada Geese.  And an American Kestrel buzzed around acting very agitated, which is understandable considering the last 48 hours probably hadn’t been too easy for him.  Fortunately, flooding hasn’t been too bad around Albany, but man is it wet!