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