One of the disadvantages of our rigid scheduling is that unless we are going owling, or cook up a pancake breakfast, we have to drive nearly two hours in the dark before arriving at our first birding destination in October. This usually means driving to some locale out at the back end of beyond, and then hitting other locations on the way back. A place like Conneaut, or Almost Pennsylvania, can seem attractive in October (after the end of silly season in the harbor), or Pointe Mouillee (before a hail of lead greets the waterfowl). Lake Erie seemed pretty quiet on this warm and windless weekend, so we opted for a search for Ammodramus sparrows, those rather skulky but striking birds of wet Canadian plains marshlands that are easy to miss on their journey to their seaside wintering spots.
Twelve of us undertook a journey in three vehicles, arriving in good light at the distant Miami-Whitewater Wetlands halfway between Cincinnati and Indiana the Indiana line. Our long walk out to the marshes through the grasslands took us along a treeline, which the early sun was just touching, and provided us with a lot of hungry birds for maybe a third of a mile, after which we wended our way through a patchwork of cattails, cornfields, sedges, and prairie vegetation for maybe a mile. As we adjusted to this setting, we got better at picking up its birds, first getting good looks at a silent marsh wren, and then a close-up (to some) Nelson’s sparrow, after which we got better and better at noticing them, and we had five or six lengthy sightings before we left the open habitat.
We next briefly checked out the Fernald property, where we picked up some waterbirds, newly acquainting many (though hardly all, since this was the site of the famous garganey sighting earlier this year) of us with this interesting site. A gratifying bathroom stop gave us a chance to explore the elaborate displays of Fernald’s colorful and troubling history as a plant for making nuclear weapons material. Three ironing boards, with irons, were set up in the lobby, and we wondered if they might be used for decontamination until we learned a quilting group was having a meeting. The staff all remembered the hordes who came to see the garganey, including Greg Miller, and they were looking forward to the opening of “his” movie the following week.
By this time traffic was heavy around the Cincinnati outerbelt, but it got pretty sticky thereafter, inching along for miles and miles before we realized America was going to King’s Island amusement park for a last fling. Soon thereafter things slowed to a crawl again, as visitors to the Renaissance Fayre and the vast yard-sale at Rt. 73 sucked in the rest of the glut of traffic. By the time we got to the wetlands south of Deer Creek SP it was hot and the sun was high. We dropped by the beach at the Park, and despite the fact that there were only five or so cars in the lot delivering dogs and children to disturb birds on the beach, the laughing gull seen by so many others was a no-show.
The DNR wetlands looked promising, but a pleasant walk through them produced more raptors than sparrows; we flogged the spot where a Le Conte’s sparrow had been seen two days previously, but it was time-out for sparrows, and the only ones we saw were those we flushed and watched fly out of sight—hardly the conditions one needs to identify a Le Conte’s satisfactorily. By this time many participants had accumulated enough sun-drenched miles on the trail, and we re-shuffled occupants to allow one car of the Avidest to visit the Darby wetlands, and the rest to retreat home.
Our Darby stop was not that far out of the way, and we had a pleasant walk through the newly-created trails out to the most active pond, where we added a bunch of waterfowl, and even some sparrows, to the list. The shorebird throngs persisted, but relatively few species were found, a couple of hundred killdeers having hogged the habitat. So our rump group wended our weary way homeward. The day resulted in a modest but satisfying 82 species, to wit:
Pied-billed grebe
Double-crested cormorant
Great blue heron
Great egret
Black vulture
Turkey vulture
Canada goose
Wood duck
American black duck
Mallard
Blue-winged teal
Northern shoveler
Northern pintail
Green-winged teal
Osprey
Bald eagle
Northern harrier
Red-shouldered hawk
Red-tailed hawk
American kestrel
American coot
American golden-plover
Killdeer
Greater yellowlegs
Lesser yellowlegs
Semipalmated sandpiper
Least sandpiper
Pectoral sandpiper
Stilt sandpiper
Ring-billed gull
Herring gull
Rock dove
Mourning dove
Chimney swift
Belted kingfisher
Red-bellied woodpecker
Yellow-bellied sapsucker
Downy woodpecker
Hairy woodpecker
Northern flicker
Red-eyed vireo
Blue jay
American crow
Tree swallow
N. rough-winged swallow
Barn swallow
Carolina chickadee
Tufted titmouse
White-breasted nuthatch
Carolina wren
Marsh wren
Ruby-crowned kinglet
Eastern bluebird
American robin
Gray catbird
Northern mockingbird
European starling
Cedar waxwing
Tennessee warbler
Yellow-rumped warbler
Black-throated green warbler
Palm warbler
Common yellowthroat
Eastern towhee
Chipping sparrow
Field sparrow
Vesper sparrow
Savannah sparrow
Nelson’s sparrow
Song sparrow
Lincoln’s sparrow
Swamp sparrow
White-throated sparrow
White-crowned sparrow
Northern cardinal
Indigo bunting
Red-winged blackbird
Eastern meadowlark
Common grackle
Brown-headed cowbird
American goldfinch
House sparrow
All photos courtesy of Rick Stelzer