Somebody figured it out once. If you go on all the Avids trips in a year, you’ll usually exceed 250 bird species in Ohio. One reason this is so is our choice of destinations, which usually involve the “specialties” of the season. We generally don’t run off in search of birds that are here year-round, but rather in the spirit of carpe diem for more exotic creatures who spend only a bit of their lives with us, and this give each month a flavor of its own. In February, our choice was between raptors — hawks, eagles, shrikes, falcons, and the like — that spend the winter with us at a few choice locations, and water birds that gather at unfrozen lakes and streams. The raptor menu, while tantalizing, was much the same as it was last month, and the month before. The water birds, scattered on our January trip, had been concentrated by the advance of ice this month, so twelve of us headed north to Lake Erie.
The Lake was mostly frozen, with only a few “leads,” open stretches of water in mid-lake open, for the shallower water close to shore tends to freeze first, and the waves and wind drive floating ice to accumulate against the land. This would make water-birding a pretty dull affair, except for one thing: the power plants. Five coal-burning plants along the Ohio shore generate electricity, as well as warm-water outflows that create plumes of open water in the nearshore ice. Birds — the larger gulls, the hardy diving ducks, and a few other oddballs — gather at these outflows to feed and roost. The potential for unusual species from the north is good, and the chance of a real rarity is enticing.
Great conditions for this brand of birding depend on a delicate balance of many factors. First, ice has to be general, to concentrate the birds. Second, the power plants chosen have to be working: the amount of hot water they put out depends on how various utilities share handling the loads; sometimes the nuclear plants will be taking the bulk of the load, and the coal-fired plants run slow, and there are fluctuations throughout the week and the day in meeting power-generation requirements, hence in warm water flow. Third, you don’t want too much open water, because then the birds can retreat to too great a distance. Fourth, some of these birds, such as the gulls, have some imponderable habits and movements that make them disappear for long periods when the habitat looks great to us. So, if you think the Avids leaders were able to foresee all these things when we set the date for this trip on a balmy April night in 2004, you are a gullible soul.
Actually, we were in luck, as some Cleveland-area spots were still having some good birds, even though their peak had passed, on 5 February, the date of our trip. Delayed by a stop—one could call it a detour–at a fast-food outlet that seemed designed to rehabilitate and re-train, or perhaps just to punish, incompetent employees, we got to the power plant at Cleveland’s East 72nd St in full glorious daylight. Lots of gulls were there, and they were close, with thousands flying in and out of a strip of open water and an ice-shelf that lay no more than 100 yards from shore. Iced-up shoals of dead gizzard shad floated like islands of fish-sticks. Gulls screamed and wheeled and argued, and the interstate roared ceaselessly behind us.
Herring gulls, and great black-backed gulls — the largest gull species in the world — dominated the scene, with just a few ring-billed gulls, the usual hordes of which we figured were spending the day at inland shopping malls. Before long we found the first glaucous gull, a huge species of the far north, larger than herring gulls, without a speck of black in its plumage. A young Thayer’s gull appeared, helpfully holding its wings aloft to display its distinctive field marks, but not all of us were able to get on it before a general alarm scattered thousands of gulls, in which it was lost.
We drove to Eastlake, where the power plant had developed a very wide plume of water, and where birds were mostly far off. We did have a horned grebe, fairly rare in the season, and were treated to two peregrine falcons that repeatedly dive-bombed a comparatively clumsy red-tailed hawk. A couple thousand spiffy common mergansers, hundreds of courting goldeneyes, and a selection of other diving ducks kept us occupied for a while.
Our way lay west, and we stopped at East 72nd again. Naturally, the birders there had just recently seen Iceland gulls, more Thayer’s gulls, and a lesser black-backed gull, but our presence didn’t help them return. Oddly, it was warm, way too warm for February Lakeside birding, when you wear everything you have and the wind still rips tears from your eyes and numbs your toes. Oh, there was wind, but it was a zephyr from the south. The temperatures rose into the 40s, and some of us — hardened off by winter — took off gloves and unzipped coats. The dead fish were starting to stink, and we saw too many dead birds out there, too, mostly mergansers and goldeneyes, some of them pathetically still in the process of dying. We decided to move on.
Our next stop was the last power plant of the day, in Avon Lake. This spot, which some have justly called the coldest in Ohio, was balmy on our arrival, with a very wide plume of unfrozen water, where a few folks in waders were standing to fish. Birds were rather scarce, but we were able to satisfy ourselves that not much new was around. We continued west along the Lake shore, finding things mostly frozen to the horizon despite the spring-like weather. Huron Harbor was iced in, with tire-tracks on the river. We stopped at Old Woman Creek, where a redpoll had been reported at the feeders the previous day, but found only the usual sunflower-addicts.
The springs at Castalia were next, and there we found a good list of dabbling ducks, as well as a bad list of mutts and mongrel waterfowl of dubious parentage. This spring-fed pond and creek stay at about 55° year-round, and attract so many ducks that half an hour is required to scan them all. Here we found our first and only warblers, some yellow-rumpeds.
Our last stop lay in northern Wyandot County, where local birder Rick Counts spreads cracked corn in a field for a goodly collection of Lapland longspurs, horned larks, and snow buntings. We were able to get good looks at all of these, as well as at Rick himself, who stopped by to see how things were going. From here, some of us headed home, while some extended the trip through nearby Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area, looking for raptors and sparrows and owls. I do not have a list of birds seen by this latter group, a list that could have added considerably to our skimpy mutual one of 51 species, not unexpected in an exploration of only a few habitats on a winter’s day. Here they are:
Canada goose
Gadwall
American wigeon
American black duck
Mallard
Northern shoveler
Canvasback
Redhead
Ring-necked duck
Greater scaup
Lesser scaup
Bufflehead
Common goldeneye
Hooded merganser
Common merganser
Red-breasted merganser
Pied-billed grebe
Horned grebe
Double-crested cormorant
Great blue heron
Bald eagle
Cooper’s hawk
Red-tailed hawk
American kestrel
Peregrine falcon
American coot
Ring-billed gull
Herring gull
Thayer’s gull
Glaucous gull
Great black-backed gull
Rock pigeon
Mourning dove
Blue jay
American crow
Horned lark
Black-capped chickadee
Tufted titmouse
White-breasted nuthatch
American robin
European starling
Yellow-rumped warblers
Song sparrow
White-throated sparrow
Dark-eyed junco
Lapland longspur
Snow bunting
Northern cardinal
House finch
American goldfinch
House sparrow