Irondequoit Bay

I stopped at a parking area on the south end of Irondequoit Bay yesterday morning (it was 20 degree F) to see what bird activity is going on down there and came across this sign:

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Hmmm, I’ve stopped at this parking area maybe 10 times and never noticed the sign before. I love history. In fact, a couple of weeks ago I generated a list of DBQ’s (document based questions) for Mike at OHA from a very old state map that showed Native American trails leading to this bay. There is one statement that bothers me about this sign though – the part about there not being a permanent effect on the destroyed Seneca Native American villages. The fact that I heard it recounted from Peter, a Seneca Native American of the Heron Clan, in a lecture on October 11, 2006 is one clue that tells me that it has had a permanent effect.
Hokay, I saw gulls all quiet on the water until they saw me and start flying towards me, kind of like Hitchcock’s The Birds:

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And two other unidentified birds mixed in with the gulls:2007-01-11 013

Then someone else drove right up behind where I was standing so I moved and couldn’t take a better photo of these two different birds. Stupid people – what were they disturbing *my* time for. I moved because I wasn’t sure why, in such a huge, empty parking area, they had to pull up right behind me. Here’s a ring billed gull all by itself – standing on the ultra-thin layer of ice?

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Here’s some geese:

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Here’s a shot from faraway of the Bay Bridge that I cross twice a day:

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Can’t really see it? Here I zoomed in on it:

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Because it is so far away, it looks like a bridge I would have built from an Erector set when I was a kid. I tried to get some good photos when I crossed over the Bay Bridge yesterday, but the camera wasn’t behaving as good as it should. So I’ll try again another day. Oh, and to get to the bottom of the bridge so I could show you how huge it really is would require me to turn right, turn left, turn upside-down and inside out – it isn’t easy getting down to the bay near the bridge from where I live! But you can count on it, I will someday – maybe this summer when it’s nice to go down the steep hill there.
Here’s some canoes waiting around for good weather – hmmm, I wonder how much it costs to rent one of those:2007-01-11 010

Further on down the south end of the bay were some ducks, but there wasn’t a parking area. They were giving me good butt shots, too. I would have loved to capture them for Mon@rch, but I didn’t! Maybe I’ll get them next time!

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