A project I'm working on had me in Willsboro this week – which gave me a great excuse to check out a few points on Lake Champlain for birds after I was finished my work. It was a beautiful, clear, cold day – perfect after so many cloudy days with snow and rain.

I checked out the boat launch at Willsboro Point where Willsboro Bay can hold nice numbers of ducks in late fall and winter before it freezes. It was quiet for birdlife, but I did find a pair of hooded mergansers as well as a small group of Canada geese.

I headed just south of Willsboro to Noblewood. Noblewood is a park run by the Town of Willsboro and is a great spot along Lake Champlain. While most places along the lakeshore are private, Noblewood offers public access to the water. From the parking area at the gate, it is a short walk along the dirt roads and wide trails toward the small beach. The mixed forest of deciduous trees, white pine, and eastern hemlock can hold a variety of woodland birds, and while walking to the water with my scope, a pileated woodpecker called. We often find pileateds in Noblewood's large trees, and once we watched them in a tree near the parking area in which the woodpeckers had drilled a hole straight through to the other side of the trunk.

Noblewood with VT mountains
The snow-capped mountains of Vermont rise above Lake Champlain and the sand spit at Noblewood.

The beach was peaceful and quiet, and there was a large raft of bufflehead and common goldeneye bobbing a few hundred yards offshore. A friend of mine had been to Noblewood only a few days earlier and did not find any goldeneye, so these ducks were likely new arrivals. Goldeneye numbers will soon swell all along the lake, and with some careful searching of the large flocks one can sometimes find a Barrow's goldeneye (a species more common in western North America) mixed in.

I walked out the trail that leads to the Boquet River – which flows into Lake Champlain at Noblewood. The mouth of the river creates a nice sand spit which is popular with a variety of birds, and is a good vantage point to scan the lake as well. The sandspit makes Noblewood the best place to look for sandpipers and other shorebirds on the New York side of Lake Champlain in late summer.

A small group of gulls sat on the end of the spit – with a few more on the north side of the Boquet's mouth as well. The flock included the most common species – great black-backed, herring, and ring-billed gulls, but it was nice to find a handful of Bonaparte's gulls as well. An American pipit was also walking along the beach foraging.

Turning my attention to the water, I looked back at the flock of ducks and scanned, finding several common loons – now molted into their basic (winter) plumage and a large number of horned grebes scattered across the lake – recent arrivals from the north.

Bohemian Waxwing
A Bohemian waxwing sits in a tree near the Essex Ferry Terminal. Bohemians have recently been arriving in the area.

While none of the birds were of uncommon species, they are always fun to see and it was hard to beat the majestic setting. The sun warmed my back on an otherwise chilly day as I listened to the waves lapping on the shore, looking at the birds and admiring Vermont's mountains like Mt. Mansfield and Camel's Hump topped with fresh, white snow against the blue sky. It was difficult to leave even as late afternoon shadows began to creep across the sand.

On the walk to my car I found evidence of recent beaver activity, something we commonly see at Noblewood. And as I drove home, I stopped in at the Essex Ferry terminal, and while there weren't many birds on the water, I did find about a dozen bohemian waxwings (another recent arrival from the north) feeding with American robins and European Starlings. It was a nice way to end the day.