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.
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| 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.
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| Oh, another Cardinal. |
I'm sure you are aware of this, but possibly some of your readers are not - in 1986 there were only 69 Trumpeter Swans left in the lower 48 states. When a separate small population was discovered in Alaska, eggs from these birds were used in a project to reintroduce Trumpeters, starting in Minnesota. It has been a spectacular success. Today, down the road from where I live, a pair of swans raised six cygnets in a beaver pond. I've seen hundreds at Crex Meadows in Northern Wisconsin, you yourself found them easily enough in Ohio. I even saw one in New Mexico this winter. Yet every time I see them (or hear them, I can't think of a more aptly named bird) I can't help but think how incredibly close we came to losing America's swan forever.
ReplyDeleteAll of which is a round about reason for saying that I, for one, do enjoy your trip reports, so thank you for writing them.
Jill in Wisconsin
I knew that they were still rare, but I didn't know that numbers had come that close. I've seen by far the most of my sightings in Ohio, but also in Illinois and once in Wisconsin, at a place called Wisconsin Rapids - I was escaping from an incoming storm due to hit Minnesota and heading east to the lake. If I recall they were just in a small pond by the side of the road of the sort you would expect to just see Mallards on. I'd driven past and done a double take, and was forced to turn around and check I wasn't imagining it!
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