In deference to the shorter days and holidays, we started our trip at 6:00 am, allowing everyone to sleep in late – at least late for Avid Birders.
Our first stop was Clear Fork, where Red Crossbills had been reported earlier in the week. We had hoped the birds stayed, but we were not able to locate a single one. However, it was wonderful to watch the sun rise over the reservoir, with a deer was grazing on the frost covered grass nearby. We heard a Common Loon calling as well as a Great Horned Owl, and a little later a Wild Turkey gobbled. Red-breasted Nuthatches were in the scotch pines along with White-breasted Nuthatches and Black-capped Chickadees. We struggled to identify all the decoys the distant shore; these hunters were using decoys that flap their fake wings.
Maintaining Avid traditions we then stopped for our morning break at McDonalds. Refueled and refreshed, we headed for Lorain.
At the Lorain harbor, we headed up the embankment, focused on finding the Common Redpolls reported the day before. We had a vagrant sighting of Jen Brumfield, who usually birds in her native Cuyahoga county. She told us “go get ‘em!”, as her group had just seen our target birds on the teasel. The Redpolls were not lazily posing on the teasel; instead they were sitting around on their asters: we watched three of these beautiful birds of the north, dining on the dried aster seeds. Next we located a Snowy Owl, which was sitting relatively close on the breakwall. (This has been a great year for Snowy Owls in Ohio with dozens of birds sited, mostly in the northern part of the state.) There were distant loons in the lake, but very few ducks. A Peregrine Falcon was posed on a post on the breakwall surveying the landscape. We watched an American Kestrel kiting as we drove over to the fishing pier area.
After lunch at Wendy’s we headed over to Huron Pier, where thousands of Ring-billed Gulls swimming in the cove. Suddenly, a report of a Golden Eagle in Ottawa County sent us scurrying to find that bird. It was not relocated, but we found a dark phase Rough-legged Hawk, several immature Bald Eagles and an immature Red-tailed Hawk. We also saw a late Greater Yellowlegs at Metzger Marsh.
At that point, we decided to head for home after a full day of birding: 45 species for 8 birders.
Canada Goose
Trumpeter Swan
Northern Shoveler
Mallard
Bufflehead
Hooded Merganser
Red-breasted Merganser
Wild Turkey
Common Loon
Pied-billed Grebe
Horned Grebe
Double-crested Cormorant
Great Blue Heron
Bald Eagle
Northern Harrier
Red-tailed Hawk
Rough-legged Hawk (dark phase)
Cooper’s Hawk
American Coot
Greater Yellowlegs
Bonaparte’s Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Rock Pigeon
Mourning Dove
Great Horned Owl
Snowy Owl
Belted Kingfisher
Downy Woodpecker
American Kestrel
Peregrine Falcon
Blue Jay
American Crow
Red-breasted Nuthatch
White-breasted Nuthatch
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
American Tree Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
Northern Cardinal
Common Redpoll
House Finch
American Goldfinch
House Sparrow