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, etc.–vied for our attention at every turn. The chorus of birdsong was unrelenting, especially in the damper valleys, from our arrival around 8 till 2 PM. Nineteen species of warblers were found (and more could have been found during the day had we tried for them), along with five vireos. Tanagers were scarce, as were flycatchers, for this time of year, it seemed. Many of the migrants were sitting tight to belt out their songs, so finding them was not always easy. Most of the singers were local breeders; the long-distance migrants are yet to come.
Knowing our time would be spent mostly in deciduous forest habitats, some of us augmented the day’s list by scrutinizing bodies of water, from lakes to puddles, on the way down, picking up a couple of loons, some ducks, a few shorebirds. So few other humans visited the SF on this perfect day that some of the more sybaritic among us were able to set up lawn chairs in the middle of the road to eat lunch while we waited for the best view of a busy worm-eating warbler in the ravine below. The utter lack of bathrooms was handled with our customary aplomb. Only one tick was found, more than enough.
The passerines were mostly done singing by 2 PM, but we wasted an hour trying to find more, birds that would have been easier earlier but which were silent by mid-afternoon. We failed to find safe and legal places to look for birds in the bottomlands near Portsmouth, and our low point was reached as we pulled into a parking lot of discarded semi trailers, frustrated and confused, but in the spirit of a lucky day we all saw a broad-winged hawk fly just overhead, conveying an unwilling snake to his redoubt behind a convenience store.
Stubbornly, we persisted in looking for prairie warblers in their favored spot at Scioto Trail SP, failing. The Pickaway County Airport yielded the usual grassland species, but Charlie’s Pond and environs very little. Calamus Swamp was visited, more to familiarize folks with the location than to find anything, but still we added four new birds. Because by 5 PM our trip-list hovered in the nineties, we stopped at Stage’s Pond, where by virtue of its birds and the traditional melding and vetting of individual results we reached 104 species with Curt’s discovery of a ruby-crowned kinglet on the way out. Sure, we could have followed Bob’s advice and stopped at Greenlawn Dam and added at least five more species, but the thought of an urban setting seemed to sound a sour note. And besides, the April record was out of reach, so we went home early for dinner or ice cream or both.
104 species as follows:
