Buenos Aires - Day 1 - Arrival

It's a long flight down to Buenos Aires, and there was no stop in Brazil which sometimes happens. Just under 13 hours, but modern planes are a lot more comfortable in terms of cabin pressure and so on, and leaving at around 10pm on Saturday after a fairly decandent and lengthy lounge experience we ended up sleeping really quite a large part of the way. We landed at about 8am local time and as we only had hand luggage were in a bus to the city pretty rapidly. 

The bus dropped us near the famous Pink Palace, the official residence of the President of the Repulblic. To Mrs L's frustration I started birding immediately - it would be a long slow walk to our hotel, about a mile away in San Telmo. And all for just 11 species, one of which was a Pigeon! Oh and House Sparrow, so in fact just nine species which were of interest. Eight if you also kick out Nanday Parakeet which shouldn't really be there. For the sake of completeness here is the list - Picazuro Pigeon, Eared Dove, Black Vulture, Crested Caracara, Rufous Hornero, Brown-chested Martin, Rufous-bellied Thrush and Rufous-collared Sparrow. This just screams South America, I was so excited. 

In the event the walk took us just under an hour as I birded as Mrs L breathed in the architecture of Buenos Aires. We were able to dump our luggage at L'Adresse Hotel near Parque Lezama at around 11am. This was a clean hotel with a great breakfast and, just like me, a slightly trendy vibe. It was also nicely positioned near a street market, and lots of bars and restaurants. After a quick change of clothes we headed out for a walk and some lunch, which we found in a covered market, the Mercado de San Telmo. This was absolutely heaving with all manner of locals and tourists, a complete scrum, but this is what we wanted, vibrant noise. Life!

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around this area, taking it all in. Parque Lezama held a few more species, including Great Kiskadee, Chalk-browed Mockingbird, Screaming and Shiny Cowbirds, Red-crested Cardinal and Creamy-bellied Thrush, but actually birding took a back seat as we wandered the streets admiring the art, browsing in shops, having a cool drink here and there and generally enjoying being on holiday. And this was just in a small part of the city, we had yet to hit the grand avenues and monuments.

In the evening we had our first steak. For the uninitiated Argentina is all about steak, but you have to pace yourself. You could end up becoming a vegetarian if you overdo it, so we made sure to only eat meat on alternate days. When I visited Buenos Aires in my thirties I had no such self control and just went mad to the point of really getting sick of it. I remember coming back and only wanting salad. We found a well-rated Parilla that I now cannot remember the name of and ordered a huge slab.

"Could we have some red wine please?"

"No."

"Er, what?"

"No. There is no red wine. In fact there is no wine today at all."  

The walls of the restarant were covered in wine. Shelves and shelves of it. There were boxes of wine stacked on the floor. On the stairs. Around the top of the walls were decorative rows of empty bottles, and behind the bar there was more wine. In fact you would struggle to see more wine in a wine shop.

"What about that wine there?"

"There is no wine."

It turns out that it was the day of the Presidential election, and on such days no restaurants are allowed to serve alcohol. Perhaps they are worried about drunken polling? Or Malbec-fuelled riots? But they didn't tell us this, and surrounded by wine on all sides involved in a somewhat existentialist conversation it was rather confusing. I guess they felt that would be a bit complicated to understand and to simply say no wine cut to the heart of the matter and avoided any discussion. But what a disaster! And we only found this out once we had ordered the food, had we known in advance we might have turned this into a salad day, but such is life. The meat was as fabulous as we expected, but boy would I have liked a glass of red! 

Buenos Aires - COVID pre-amble

A long time ago, in April 2020, Mrs L and I were booked on flights to Japan. We had been to Tokyo once before on an extended layover, just enough time to realise we liked it and that we needed a lot more time there, and when the opportunity had arisen had booked a week. It would be cherry blossom season, and we were flying to Tokyo and then taking a train a bit further north - we had researched how the weather and the latitude influenced when the trees would be at their finest, and we were slightly too late for the more southerly locations.

A couple of months before we were due to travel I was sitting at a bar in an airport lounge chatting to a fellow passenger, a Doctor. I can't remember where I was going, France perhaps. Docked in Japan was a quarantined cruise ship with a mysterious infectious disease on board. Rumours were spreading of a respiratory virus originating in China, and on land the Japanese authorities were scrambling to put in place containment plans. COVID wasn't yet the global phenomenon it became, but we chatted about how Japan might not be a good place to travel to at the moment. We were flexible I said, could change the ticket and go anywhere. How about South America? Mrs L had wanted to go to Argentina for ages and it seemed clear of whatever this illness is, plus it would be a nice time of year. A few days later I made the change. We were off to Buenos Aires!

Of course we never made it. It seems ancient history now but the following month, in March, the world began to shut down. My office was divided into two groups of people, an 'orange' team and a 'blue' team. We were to work alternate weeks in order to limit the number of people at desks, and the workstations were rearranged in a zigzag formation so nobody was either next to or opposite anyone else. I was in the first group who would continue to work in the office but only made it a few days before it was decreed that anyone who had recently travelled to a certain list of countries with high incidences of COVID had to quarantine, which included France. It was the 13th March 2020. I left the office mid-morning expecting to be back in a couple of weeks. I didn't go back for a over a year and a half. Needless to say Argentina didn't happen. In fact nothing happened. I didn't travel abroad again until November 2021. I barely travelled in the UK, and for many months I was confined at home. I missed two birthdays in lockdown. Then again I didn't die whereas many people did. Here's what I wrote on that day in March, my crystal ball was clearly firing on all cylinders.

The issue I see is one of sustainability and endurance. Next week was my week at home anyway, but what if that extends to two weeks? Or a month? Or two months? I am going to go stir crazy. And what if Mrs L and the children are also all sent home? And frankly this is a when not if and I think we all know that. What happens when all five of us are cooped up for several weeks in Chateau L? Family harmony and happy matrimony, that's what. But it may at least result in some blogging.

Of course all of this did happen, my only inaccuracy was that several weeks became multiple months. All in the past now thankfully, I can barely believe it happened sometimes, but happen it most definitely did. And our trip to Buenos Aires got rebooked. It took until October 2023, but we did eventually get there and it was fantastic. The wait was definitely worth it. Over the next few posts I'll try and give a flavour of what we did and where we went, but as a city break it is virtually unequalled, an extraordinary city. Vibrantly South American, but also cosmopolitan and restrained in a European manner - an oft-used cliché but one you'll understand if you spend time there. Off we go!

The only way is up

I knew it would get better, and it has. In the last few days Nick had a Whinchat, Tony had a Redstart, Marco had a Spotted Flycatcher. I didn't see any of those, and indeed Saturday morning was pretty quiet all things considered. Business as usual.

But last night I was doing a bit a of a 'live' noc-migging and what turned out to be a Whimbrel flew over. Thinking I wouldn't be hearing anything bar the usual sirens and gunshots I hadn't started recording, and instead was just listening to the feed whilst lying in bed. Luckily Bob came to the rescue. He doesn't live far away, and he had been recording, so in the morning after I'd mentioned to him that I'd heard something that was probably decent at 11.31pm precisely he went and found that something. I must have been nearly asleep as I didn't think that there were as many notes as Whimbrel, but sure enough when Bob played it back there was the trace. It had called four times but I'd only heard three of them - I probably missed the initial really faint one. It's only the eighth time I've had Whimbrel on the patch, but six of those have now been in this manner, a nocturnal observation. Obviously it's not as good as actually seeing the birds flying over, but I still find it quite exciting to think that what are really rather rare patch birds are flying over my garden at night.

I was up early this morning, hitting the main playing fields as the sun rose red in the sky. There were no waders on Alex, quelle surprise, but I did get a flyover Tree Pipit just before 7am. I initially blanked it out which was very stupid of me given it was one of my targets for the morning, but it did the decent thing and called quite a few times before disappearing off south west. A number of the team had managed a rare spring record so it was good to catch up. 

So as predicted things are looking up and I think I have timed my return just about right. I probably could have skipped last week, and the weekend as well actually, but now seems to be the time. I hope I can continue to both listen late and night and get up early in the morning!

The fencing is coming down soon.

This is what four months of constant repair looks like. An eyesore.

Wait for it.....The Patch

It had to happen sooner or later, I visited the patch. I've been avoiding it since about June, I just haven't found the inspiration or inclination to give it a go. I normally avoid it in June anyway, but then I went away at the start of July and the trip was so amazing that to start plodding around Wanstead just held no appeal when I got back. None.

But I have to otherwise I am not a birder. With a heavy heart and a sinking feeling I left the house just after 6am last Wednesday and headed out. So how was it? Well, I won't lie, it was dead. I racked up about 40 species but other than the feral dross numbers of everything were really low. I saw just two Whitethroats. Waders? Negative Ghostrider. Really it ought to better than it was, but our habitat just isn't conducive to retaining passage waders, or at least not beyond first light which I simply cannot manage. I've lost count of the number of Common and Green Sandpipers Bob has recorded, supplemented by Oystercatcher and Ringed Plover, but none of them have been seen on the deck the next morning. 

Bandstand Pond always seems promising but rarely ever is.

It was pleasant enough I suppose, good to be out, getting my steps in. I had the area largely to myself, a few joggers, a few dog walkers. I was struck by how dry it was, how overgrown some of the paths were. Despite my long absence I still knew my way around, still had (unfulfilled) expectations of where birds might be found. I even got marginally excited as I approached Alex. How foolish of me. It is a stinking blight on the landscape in high summer, a tremendous loss of water and a large amount of scum and general filth. Wader count zero. Which to be fair is the normal wader count but I still live in hope.

It was important to get this first visit over and done with, to reset my expectations and lower the bar considerably. From here on in it ought to improve. Elsewhere in London the first Spotted Flycatchers are appearing, and in Fife there have been huge numbers of Tree Pipits moving south and the first Whinchat. They are on their way.

It was good to see that the generosity of dog-walkers continues

The last word in domestic pizza

Blog material is beginning to dry up, soon the relentless travel posts will have to start again, unless something else decides to invade my garden. Locusts perhaps? Or I could hit the patch - surely it must be about to wake from its summer slumber? But before I revert here is one final nod to garden living. Pizza. But let's back up a bit first. I love growing plants and I enjoy gardening, in particular I like attempting to turn a suburban London back garden into a sub-tropical paradise. Everywhere you look there are palms, bamboos, cycads, agaves, aloes, yuccas, araucarias and so on. None of them should be here, and it's definitely not for everyone, but I love it. It's like being on holiday. It has been a labour of love in the tiny amount of spare time I seem to have and it looks pretty nice if I don't say so myself, definitely not the normal domestic garden vibe, and a very very long way from a sterile rectangle. But whilst it looks pretty cool we've rarely spent much time enjoying it. Mainly this is due to the weather being constantly rubbish, but it's also because I'm too busy doing stuff to it to sit in it, that it's too polluted (see recent posts), and finally because we've never really had any reliable garden furniture on which to sit. That changed this summer with the purchase of a new table and chairs, some cushions, a parasol, and then a disgustingly ugly but extremely practical outdoor storage box to put it all in. We initially put this on the terrace but it was so horrible that we couldn't bear to look at it and it was relegated to further down the garden. Seeing as it doubles as a bench it seemed only right to put in in the spot that was until recently the cat toilet, and which had after all originally been conceived as a nice place to sit. We have come full circle somehow. It is still ugly but I have managed to vaguely conceal it amongst tropical plants and break up the outline a bit, at least from the top of the garden looking down. Thus:

Because the tables and chairs are new and shiny, and because the weather has finally been decent, we've been eating outdoors quite a bit at the weekends and also after work. Again, see earlier post about loss of paté. And it so happens that this storage box is sufficiently large to also fit our wood-fired outdoor pizza oven that my sister bought us a few years back. And because it's right there and no longer buried in a chest indoors I fired it up this weekend. 

I'd forgotten how fantastic it is! It's called an "Ooni" (other brands are available). It's not big - one small pizza at a time - but because of that it packs away nice and compactly. It has three retractable legs, a removeable chimney stack, a hopper for fuel - in this case wood pellets, and a 12 inch stone slab. It only takes around a quarter of an hour to reach the required temperature of around 400 degrees, and part of the magic is that as well as the stone slab on the bottom becoming incredibly hot, the design of the oven means that the flames from the wood pellets arc over the top above the pizza. It is impossible to describe how different - better different - a pizza tastes when cooked in this manner. Like eating pizza at a proper pizza restaurant, but somehow even better than that as you have made it yourself. It comes out piping hot with just the right amount of charcoal on the crust, a firm base, and with lightly grilled toppings, And it is unbelievably rapid, probably no more than a minute if it is maintained at the right temperature. You have to keep an incredibly close eye on it, and turn the pizza 90 degrees probably once every 15 seconds. It is so quick that a family of five can't eat pizza quicker than you can cook it, and this includes teenagers.

Here's a photo of it on top of our fixed barbeque. I must investigate getting a lid for it that will protect it during the winter and during rain, but then also double as a pizza oven table in the summer. And finally a photo of it in action. Such was my greed and the familial clamour for more that I forgot to take a picture of a pizza on a plate, but you get the idea.

If it's not cats it's slugs...

Ater the paté incident the instances of cats in the garden seems to have declined. So far the ultrasonic things seem to be doing their job, and my morning round of shit-clearing has been put on hold. Instead I walk about the garden with tweezers looking for slugs. Now I know that slugs and snails are a vital part of the garden ecosystem, however there is mass imbalance at Chateau L, likely caused by the extremely favourable conditions in our small suburban garden grounds. By favourable conditions I mean the very large number of plants that I painstakingly water to ensure healthy and consistent growth. Healthy, consistent and delicious growth....

It is a sad fact that both the slugs and I seem to like the same plants. Mostly I grow plants as I like to look at them, but some of them I grow to eat. The slugs just like to eat them. I mean maybe they appreciate the aesthetics, who can say, but the physical manifestation is that they just eat them. Ravenously, and these are not compatible points of view. What is really annoying is that there are plenty of plants in my garden that I neither want to eat nor look at. They are called weeds, and the slugs pay them no attention whatsoever. Each evening millions of them crawl out from under pots, cracks in the terrace, paving stones, and make a straight line for all my foliage plants. 

Tetrapanax papyrifer 'Rex', recently shorn of a nymber of its lower leaves

There is two plants which they adore. Firstly my beans, which have been an utter disaster this year. Between the slugs and the blackfly there is essentially nothing left, I think I have had one small serving of runner beans despite all the work I have put in. And don't even talk to me about cucumbers. Secondly I have this quite incredible plant called a Tetrapanax with wonderful velvety leaves that can reach a metre across, held on long stalks. It's a real centrepiece, a standout plant. Or it would be if it the leaves were not mercilessly eaten to leave just the ribs. The slugs have organised themselves into work gangs to ensure that they demolish these leaves with maximum efficiency, and I can come out in the morning to find just the skeleton of a what had been a pristine leaf left. Hence the tweezers.

I cannot bring myself to kill slugs. I tell myself that in addition to all the nice things they eat they also perform a stack of low-level garden maintenance that I probably don't even notice, but which if they were not around I almost certainly would notice. The top of the garden has most of the plants that both I and the slugs care deeply about, and so I patrol this area with a large pair of tweezers and a flower pot, collecting them up and then taking them down to the bottom of the garden where I chuck them behind the shed. Once they have sorted themselves out they no doubt switch on their homing beacons and start heading back up, but at least this way they're not just all hanging around at the metaphorical table waiting for the next sitting. There does seem to be an inexhaustible supply of them though, so either they travel much faster than I give them credit for, or we are in an endless sisyphian loop whereby at any one point one third of the garden's slugs are behind the shed, one third are making their way back up the garden (pausing briefly for a bean snack), and the remaining third are chowing down as much ornamental leaf matter as possible before their inevitable next journey to the shed. 

This seems to be working in that so far as the Tetrapanax has been able to produce new leaves quicker than one third of the slugs can eat them. The leaves are absolutely gigantic and in hot weather grow incredibly quickly, but it's critical to the visual appeal of the plant that the leaves remain intact - although to be fair those ones they do eat tend to be at the bottom of the plant and so can be removed without spoiling the canopy. The beans, being much smaller, get eaten that much more quickly and my sweeps of the vegetable patch are currently only just sufficient to keep the damage to sustainable levels and I fear that I am going to lose the battle. This raises an interesting question, a conflict of sorts, as I've also seen slugs eating cat turds. As you can imagine this is a handy benefit at Chateau L, and one that is hard to ignore. But what would I prefer here? Morning sweeps of the garden with tweezers to remove slugs accompanied by the vague possibility of beans, but then also a morning sweep of the garden with a shovel to remove and bury cat shit? Not very enjoyable. Or should I do nothing, let nature take its course and accept the loss of beans and other plants as the price of turd removal? Tough one. My gut feel is that the slugs prefer beans to fecal matter and that given the choice will skirt round a turd and head straight for the beans. That would be my choice frankly. I suppose I could test this with a carefully placed bean.... I don't suppose there is any way to train slugs is there? Or genetically modify them to only devour one thing and not the other? Thought not. But think of the benefit! Maybe in my next life as a malacologist. Now there's a word that doesn't get used very often!

Cat Wars

At the end of last week I installed some of those ultrasonic cat-scarers in our garden. A comlex operation to work out the best pattern but I was fairly hopeful that I'd managed good coverage. Demonstrating what I good job I've done, here's a photo of Mrs L trying to get the washing in that evening. The next morning my nice shady garden relaxation area, aka the litter tray, was clear. Wow! The general aroma of my garden is still Eau de Renard, but there is a marked lack of solid offerings over the past few days. Is it really that simple?

Yes. Well no actually. A couple of days later we were preparing an al fresco evening meal in the kitchen - salads, cheeses, bread, cold meats, that kind of thing. We were almost ready to go when the Olympic 100m men's semi-finals started, we had missed the first one as it only lasted ten seconds, but the whole family decamped to the front room to watch the final two races. These were also pretty speedy.

The athletes had nothing on the small ginger and white cat that was on the kitchen counter licking the paté when we came back. It shot out of the kitchen like an exocet missile, back through the conservatory and out into the garden. Hopefully a little blast of ultrasonic noise about half way down upped its pace a little. A gold medal performance. We threw the paté away.

Bloody hell! Is it not enough that they strut around my garden thinking it is their own?!! Unbelievable. The trouble with cats is that the owners are entirely absent and unaccountable. People buy a cat and then probably never see it again. I have no idea where this one is from and the people who introduced it to the neighbourhood probably have no idea where it is or what it is doing either. A dog running around loose could probably be traced, and then you could give the owner a piece of your mind about letting it out of their sight and so on, especially if you found it on your property. But it seems perfectly acceptable that if you have a cat that you're able to completely absolve yourself of any responsibility for it. Cut a hole in your back door to let it out and that's it, your job is done. You need not concern yourself with minor details such as it crapping in someone else's garden, obliterating wildlife, exploring other people's houses and spoiling their food, it's not your problem. In fact you're oblivious to this even happening, you just have a lovely pet that sometimes sits on the sofa with you and purrs. Bliss. Actually the little fucker spends most of its time tearing round the neighbourhood causing havoc.

As I said, I'd not knowingly seen this particular one before. There's a horrible larger ginger and white one, a fat and fluffy wholly ginger one, a black and white one, and then one of those actually quite nice looking but still a bastard grey ones with yellow eyes. That one is called Pepper and I know where it lives when it isn't shitting in my garden. Being cute is no defence. The others I have no idea where they come from or who owns them, but it is completely unacceptable that any of them dare come inside my house. Yes the door was open, but that's not an invitation to come in and have a meal. Again, where are the owners in all this? Nowhere that's where. Shouldn't be allowed.

2023 is nearly over

Well that was Ohio. I could have skipped it, but that would have left a gap and that would have annoyed me beyond what you might think would be normal. I can't help it. But it was the penultimate trip of the year and there is just one more to come, a last hurrah before I can close that chapter (in my tiny tiny mind) and move on. I confess I am looking forward to starting on 2024, I seem to be on a bit of a roll. I might even be able to catch up before it all drains away again. Let's see. But it is progress though as a few weeks ago I couldn't even contemplate putting pen to paper, or rather finger to keyboard. It couldn't be more different now - sorry! There is no explanation for this, the only thing I can perhaps point to is that feeling of inner annoyance that only I understand and that only I can do something about. It may also coincide with a particularly busy period at work, and this is in some way a release. No idea. Readers avoid all this inner drama, they just have to read it. Or not of course, which doesn't seem to matter or have any bearing on whether I am able to string a sentence together. That comes from within rather than any external spur. As I've mentioned before many times I am clearly not alone, and in fact I stopped writing this midway in order to undertake another sad cull from the Blog Roll over on the right. It was bigger than ever before. Two years, three years, in some cases more, and for some of them the webpages are even defunct. Will they ever come back or is that it? I think we all know the answer sadly.

Anyway, back to August 2024 and I've still not managed to go birding locally in any meaningful way. Seeing as it seems to be wader season I am easing myself in by doing a bit of noc-migging. This has largely not borne fruit, but I do have a recording of a Common Sandpiper and a few unknown things. For one of the unknowns I was actually awake, listening through headphones whilst sat in bed. I don't know why either. It sounds a bit like a Whimbrel but I am not sure. Of course on the nights where I sensibly decided to go to sleep like a normal person Bob goes and records Avocets and Oystercatchers and so on.....C'est la vie I guess. Much more satisfying was a Green Sandpiper that had the presence of mind to call somewhere south of my garden not in the middle of the night but shortly before I was about to log on for work and was pottering around the bedroom. I'd forgotten how fun it is. More fun would be finding one on the edge of one of the ponds, but that would entail actually going out onto the patch and I am not quite ready yet.

Much more exciting than any of this however is the warm weather we have been enjoying lately. I like warm weather for a number of reasons. One of these is that it really makes a difference to my plants, they need some intense heat to kickstart growth. But another reason is that it is perfect for chilled Rosé and other summer drinks. Here is an other summer drink, a Hurricane that I made last weekend. Remember people, it's five o'clock somewhere. And it's the weekend again very soon...

Ohio - September 2023 - Day 6 - Back to Chicago

The next morning I bade goodbye to my family and set off west, destination O'Hare. It's about a five hour drive but I intended to bird all the way. I started up at Lorain Harbour where there were tons of Gulls including Bonaparte's which was a State target. I also jammed another Ohio tick here with Goosander. I then had a late breakfast after which I reversed my car into a pillar putting a large dent in. Thankfully I was fully covered, but it did make me a bit anxious about the extra time that might be needed when giving it back in Chicago.

I popped in at Magee again seeing as it was on the way, and was rewarded with many more Warblers than the day before, including a stunning male Black-throated Blue Warbler. Parula and Wilson's Warbler were also new. It's such a great site, a lengthy boardwalk winds through swampy forest just back from the lake - a real migrant hotspot when conditions are right and it's pretty good even when they are not. Brown Thrasher was also new for Ohio.

Back at Howard Marsh the wader-fest continued, and I finally added American Golden Plover to my ABA list. So odd that I'd seen both Acadian Flycatcher and AGP in the UK first, but actually AGP is pretty hard in the lower 48, they never stay anywhere for very long. New waders vs the day before included Wilson's Snipe, Wilson's Phalarope, Knot, Buff-breasted Sandpiper and Spotted Sandpiper, but otherwise it was much the same as before. A Hooded Merganser was a bit of a surprise.

With an early evening flight back to London I couldn't linger and sadly pointed the car west. I managed one more brief stop in Indiana to top up that list at a place called Boot Lake Nature Preserve, but I was about done. Handing the car back did indeed take a bit longer due to the caved in rear but they were pretty decent about it and I didn't get charged. Although not a birding trip (although hell will freeze over before any trip I go on doesn't involve a bird somewhere along the line) I was pleased with what I'd been able to see - 116 species in total,  two new States, and my Ohio list up to 156.

I arrived back in London in time for work, and during a brief bit of down time was able to nip out and get a new bird for Wanstead, Pintail, which had arrived a few days earlier and been good enough to stay. As I said at the time, a Lake Michigan to Heronry twitch. I am very jammy.

Ohio - September 2023 - Day 5 - Searching for Ohio ticks

The list was going well. When I had crossed the State line on Friday evening my Ohio list had stood at 103, and after a weekend of simply pootling around Oberlin had advanced to 124. I'd seen more in Maine in just a couple of days earlier in the year. It was time to start birding properly, and with Megan back to work I had the whole day to see what I could find. 

I started at Huron Harbour which has a dried up impoundment on the lake shore past the boat channel. This was excellent provided you were prepared to ignore a bit of signage, and I got fabuluous views of whole bunch of waders - 50+ Semipalmated Sandpiper, a Pectoral Sandpiper, a Baird's Sandpiper, 80 Semipalmated Plover, Killdeer and 2 Least Sandpiper. Bald Eagles flew overhead and an American Redstart bounced around the bushes. Further west, at Sheldon Marsh SNP a walk to the lake shore alongside shallow pools added 27 species including Ovenbird amd four species of Woodpecker. This was all a sideshow really, my actual destination was the Magee Marsh Boardwalk, which in mid-September I hoped would be buzzing.

Cardinal again

It wasn't, not the right conditions and I was a little later than I had hoped, but it was still excellent with a decent selection of Warblers, though this being autumn none were in spectacular plumage. Northern Waterthrush, Common Yellowthroat, Bay-breasted Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler and Black-throated Green Warbler. Close by I went for a long walk at the Walking Trail Pools at Ottawa NR. This was if anything better than Magee, with over 40 species seen in a two mile circuit - loads of wildfowl, a few waders, Peregrine, Pelicans, tons of Egrets and Herons, and Tennessee and Chestnut-sided Warblers.

My final stop of the day was at Howard Marsh where a good selection of waders had been reported. From a newly constructed raised boardwalk I had excellent views of Killdeer, Semipalmated Plover, Short-billed and Long-billed Dowitcher, Lesser and Greater Yellowlegs, Stilt Sandpiper, Pectoral Sandpiper and Semipalmated Sandpiper all at really quite short range. There were at least 16 Caspian Tern roosting on the mud, and 17 Trumpeter Swan dotted around. By the time I was done my Ohio list was on 145. Surely I would manage to get to 150, although I did fly home tomorrow.

Oh, another Cardinal.

Ohio - September 2023 - Days 3 & 4 - A weekend in Lorain County

Yay, it's the weekend! Saturday dawned and I was in one of my favourite places - Oberlin, Ohio. A quiet liberal college town in a fairly rural setting, a central square, old stone buildings, small shops, wooden houses with covered verandas and Boston Ferns, neat lawns, not too many Trump flags though there are some. I am sure I have blogged about this before but it's my idealised American town. This is where my Grandfather worked and lived for nearly his whole life, where my Mum lived for a few years, where my Aunt and Uncle grew up, where my Grandparents and another Aunt I am not sure I ever met are now buried, where I spent many a happy Christmas, and where my American heritage took root. 

Ohio is not glamorous, isn't flashy, doesn't have many claims to fame. It's not quite the full-on Midwest, it has eastern notions but can't shake that rural backwater image. Areas of it are proper rust belt, faded and delapidated. Youngstown, a Bruce Springsteen song I mentioned in a recent post, is in Ohio - north-east Ohio to be precise. The song is a classic about the dwindling and ultimate failure of industrial blue-collar working America, a familiar Springsteen theme, but rooted in absolute accuracy and truth. It is no coincidence that Trump's VP pick for the 2024 election is from a town in Ohio that once also had a steel mill. Oberlin seems to be an oasis, but you don't have to drive far to see the Ohio that Vance wrote a book about. The lake shore has more than its share of faded history, of crumbling housing and infrastructure, dead and rotting industry. Trump won't make an iota of difference even he promises it, but the Democrats haven't given a rats arse about the area for decades so you can see where this is headed. Oh dear, enough about politics.

We had a lazy morning, the effect of a delayed time difference and a long dinner with Chris who I had not seen for quite a few years. I walked around the block before breakfast - Eastern Wood-Pewee, Downy Woodpecker, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Black-capped Chickadee and, of course, Cardinals, the State bird. When I was a kid my Grandfather would send me used stamps from time to time. Many of these had birds on, a popular USPS theme at the time. Cardinals were my favourites, and being the State bird of several States featured heavily. Later in the morning I drove out of town a bit to a field that had flooded and that had until recently held a good number of migrating waders (shorebirds!). These had moved on but there were at least 40 Killdeer and 60+ Shore Lark, invisible when driving by.

We took a walk in the Cemetery after lunch, checked out the deceased relatives and walked into the Arboretum and out the other side into town. The university is on two sides of a large square. I always think it is a bit like the town in Back To The Future. When I was little there was a house near this square where every Christmas the owners would set up a huge train set and people could come in and see it. I never had trains, I was a Lego kid, so this was just marvellous and I always looked forward to it despite the multiyear gaps. I can't remember when I last went, no doubt it is long gone. Of my Ohio childhood memories this and the sledding done the side of the old house on upturned dustbin lids are the ones that really stick. Now, as an adult, it is the classic houses that resonate. Probably because I live in a (by comparison) tiny brick-built semi in London, these wooden-clad houses seem other-worldly, beautiful, set on large plots surrounded by huge mature trees. Inwardly say to myself that I could live somewhere like this one day. I wonder if I will ever live in America, what it would take? And where would I go? Of all the States is Ohio really the one? What about California? Oregon? Florida? Maine? Minnesota? I can't think of many places I've been in America that I haven't liked. I would like to live almost everywhere, magnificence is common, especially out west. But life is too short. 

In the evening we had an impromtu cocktail-making session and another nice dinner. It had been an easy day doing very little. I like those from time to time, in fact I think I need them. Usually my holidays are at a million miles an hour, and I get home satisifed but ultimately more tired than before I left. The slow pace of Oberlin Ohio made a nice change. There would be birds again after the weekend.

Pet Corner

Relatives!

I was up early on Sunday for a quick stint birding at Carlisle Reservation. This was very successful with a family of Acadian Flycatchers seen, my first ABA tick of the trip. There were also both Red-eyed and Warbling Vireo, Tree Swallow, Carolina Wren, hundreds of Common Grackles, as well as Common Yellowthroat and Magnolia Warblers. Then home for breakfast as Megan was now up and about - we had waffles, my Grandfather's favourite and seeing as this was his old house, in honour of him. I love America.

Making and eating waffles somehow took the rest of the morning, and then Megan and I went out for a walk to Sandy Ridge. This is a marshland site with a large shallow lake, and a good birding site I'd been to before several times. A casual walk round the lake produced 30 species, many of which were inexplicably Ohio ticks. I suspect that I simply didn't record much back in the days before eBird - in fact the last Ohio list I had entered historically dated from 2014, so Shoveler, Pied-billed Grebe, Osprey, Cedar Waxwing and Blackpoll Warbler were all "new". We then went up to Lake Erie to look at the water, and had a short walk around Lakeview Park which held hundreds of Ring-billed Gull.

Sandy Ridge

Ohio - September 2023 - Day 2 - Indiana and Michigan

I started the day with a seawatch at Marquette Park, Gary. Actually that's not true, I started the day at a 24h Denny's with a wonderful all-American breakfast with limitless coffee. Then I went seawatching. Not the sea obviously, but Lake Michigan is so massive that it might as well be, and like seawatching here the same theories with regards to weather apply. The prior few days had been excellent, with Skuas blown close to shore, and I joined a number of other birders for about an hour. No luck, whatever particular conditions had brought the Skuas in wasn't the same today, even though the breeze was onshore and quite stiff. I had to make do with a small flock of Sanderling and a Semipalmated Sandpiper. Still, it was my first eBird list in Indiana which was very exciting an one more step towards my goal of filling in the entire country. 

Next stop Miller Woods, part of Indiana Dunes NP. This is a tract of scrubby forest on sandy soils that gradually transitions into dunes and pools before hitting the shore. I started at the part furthest away from the water and gradually headed north. The first pools near the Douglas Center held a good number of Wood Duck, five Solitary Sandpiper and a Wilson's Snipe. Most notable were the high numbers of Red-headed Woodpecker and Eastern Wood-Pewee, but as I picked my way along sandy paths I found Downy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Least Flycatcher and Eastern Phoebe. Swainson's Thrush and Eastern Bluebird were also fairly numerous, and at the pools closest to the lake I found Belted Kingfisher and a Great Blue Heron. It was already mid-morning when I hit the beach and I had a long way to go, including wanting to make a side-trip into Michigan, another State tick.

Galien River County Park wasn't too far off my route to Ohio, and was a site for Yellow-bellied Flycatcher which would be an ABA tick. I ended up hearing one but not seeing it so it remains a target! Three Sandhill Crane were impressive, as were a very close Broad-winged Hawk cruising past as head height as I spend some time stood at the end of a raised walkway that stretched out over the steep-banked valley. I should at this point mention that I didn't have a camera with me as this wasn't a birdng trip (even though I am probably making it sound like one), so just like Colombia there are going to be no avian illustrations. At this point in 2023 I wasn't really feeling it anyway, and only recently in mid-2024 have I rediscovered my mojo. Anyhow, you will just have to imagine how fantastic it was.

View from the walkway

Galien was a really nice spot and I would have like to have had more time here. The walkway over the valley was at tree height, and it was here that I heard the Flycatcher I was looking for several times but try as I might I couldn't find it. I even have a recording of it! One day! 

I tried some close-by sewage ponds to try and up my fledging Michigan list. This was pretty successful with Cedar Waxwing, American Goldfinch, a few Shoveler and a Blue Jay, but with time pressing I had to leave. This leaves my Michigan list on a meagre 20 species, and Indiana on 36, but it does ink in both States I suppose which was my primary intent. Stupid intent. With Ohio still nearly four hours away I refound the main road, the I90 that crosses the State east-west, and made tracks. I wanted to be Megan's for when she wrapped up work. In the event it took around three and a half hours, still a long stint but driving in the USA is supremely easy. I saw my first Bald Eagle of the trip shortly before Toledo - the Ohio list was underway!