Seventeen Avid Birders drove in a tight formation of five vehicles to Lake Erie once more on 8 Jan, hopeful despite southerly winds and a lack of encouraging news from others. Focusing scopes with one hand and drinking coffee with the other, we counted over a thousand waterfowl of fourteen species at frosty Wellington Reservoir. Canada geese were most numerous, a pair of uncomfortable-looking green-winged teals the least. The birds at Oberlin Reservoir proved not worthy of the trouble of unloading personnel and material at the site. At Lorain, we found a dredge working the harbor (!) and rather skimpy numbers of the four standard gull spp. Gulls were few, and no more diverse, at the other side of the river, either, and snowy owls and jaegers continued absent. Fearless forecasts were for some redpolls at least, and eventually we spotted half a dozen or so feeding on the ground with tree sparrows in the NW corner of the impoundment, whereupon most of us took the weedy way back to the parking lot, seeing a nice calling flock of 70 redpolls overhead on the way, as well as a pipit and seven spp of sparrows and two warblers-only butterbutts, but what do you want in January?
Avon Lake had decent numbers of gulls of the usual four flavors, no waterfowl, and a redtail that regarded us haughtily from a catwalk on the powerplant. It was sunny, and ordinary gulls flying through the shadow of the plant’s smokestacks over the water seemingly turned suddenly into jaegers, at least briefly until they emerged into the sunlight once more. Avon Lake has been voted the coldest birding spot in Ohio, but by now the sun was warm and the temperature had shot way up into the thirties. Rocky River Park was strangely scoterless, but had a few goldeneyes for the day-list, and an odd ringbill that demonstrated the great plumage variability of gulls. The wastewater plant next to Edgewater in Cleveland had many loafing gulls of the predictable four kinds, as well as some greater scaups. A side-trip to Whiskey Island met only locked gates.
A trip down Marginal Road added mostly numbers to the list of the four mundane gull spp, though a mute swan was seen. A search for northern shrikes at Gordon Park yielded only derisive calls from the resident pair of mockingbirds. Eastlake was fairly comfortable by 2 pm, with the Familiar Four gulls to stare at, a raft of many mergs offshore, and tantalizing glimpses of an interesting raptor, glimpses so brief that subsequent descriptions sounded more like a birders’ version of Rashomon or the twelve blind men and the elephant story. A tern-indeterminate as to species-was seen by two, a good bird for January in Ohio to be sure. The official trip ended at this point, but half our number chose the Optional Extension to Headlands Beach SP, an adventure in which your narrator was unable to take part, and reports from which I leave to the adventurers themselves.
We saw 54 species on the Official segment of the trip, numbers of which follow:
