Columbus Audubon

Under other trips of late, which featured various trepidations, intrigues, and exertions, this one was a spring idyl. Eighteen of us went against migration’s grain to start our morning in Shawnee SF in Scioto and Adams counties. The creeks were gurgling, the sun was warm, and flowers–dogwood, wild iris, wood geranium, phlox, fire pink, bergamot, […]

Twelve of us pounded pavement 200 miles northeast to Conneaut in hopes of seeing a black-headed gull that had disported itself there daily for the preceding week. It was unaccustomedly bright and warm in the harbor, and only a long and ragged line of attentive birders on the pier persuaded us we’d finally reached the

It shouldn’t have happened. At least we shouldn’t have had to do it. We pride ourselves on birding in Ohio on our monthly trips. Admittedly that’s making a virtue of necessity, since from Columbus other states are a hefty distance away. But the good birds weren’t showing up in Ohio, and even the almost-good ones

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.

The temperature finally dropped below 40 degrees for the last Avids trip of the millenium as seven hardy souls ventured northward in search of early winter birds. The day began at Woodlawn Cemetery in Toledo where scouting reports boasted of boreal irruptives like white-winged and red crossbills, pine siskins, and common redpolls. We were not

If I were asked by someone to describe a typical November Avid Birders trip, I would probably describe a cold, windy day along the central basin of Lake Erie looking over large expanses of water. Birds such as scoters, jaegers, oldsquaws, black-legged kittiwakes, and purple sandpipers would be the quarry. Ninety-nine times out of 100,