The Avid Birders sampled the shores of Lake Erie from Vermilion to the very verge of Michigan on 4 November looking for migrants of the season. Polling data up to the very last minute—bitter experience has taught us not to invest much credence in 24-hour weather forecasts of Lakeside weather—looked good for our plans, with moderate NW winds and partly sunny skies, and temperatures in the 50s. Thirteen of us stumped Wellington Res. in Lorain Co. for incipient flocks of waterfowl, then Sherod Park just west of Vermilion for close to an hour of lake-watching, but none of the Lake’s birds were close to shore. A stop at Huron and walk to the end of the breakwall got us lots of looks at folks fishing, and they got looks—quizzical, mostly—at us; one would have thought the harbor folks there would be used to birders by now. Our best bird was a first-year lesser black-backed gull, which obligingly disported itself close to the breakwall and in good light. Hundreds of walleye boats dispersed Lake birds offshore, however, and we decided on a radical change of venue.
North Pointe Mall, north of Toledo and maybe half a mile shy of the Michigan line, was our next stop. We were hoping to grab a slice of the expanding fan of raptors that for the last week streamed over Lake Erie Metropark in Michigan, not far north. It was a quiet day at the this suburban mall, and the birds were scarce at first, too; one of us suggested we compare numbers of raptors with numbers of drivers who pulled up to ask what the heck we were up to. Some of the curious were amused, but some were genuinely interested in the local hawk spectacle; one employee inside the mall, who lives not far away, told us hawks had been out there every day trying to catch her cats, and others eating mice in nearby farm fields. Eventually we got a modest flight of over thirty raptors of five species over 2 ½ hours, and were relieved to learn later that the folks at LEMP hadn’t had the expected big day either, so maybe the Mall will remain a good spot for Ohioans hoping to pick off a look at all the golden eagles and Swainson’s hawks, etc., the folks up north keep reporting—nearly all of these birds have to be passing through Ohio.
As it was nearing mid-afternoon and the end of any expected hawk surge, we left in two groups, one going through Killdeer Plains WA on the way back, most of us going back to Ottawa NWR for the storied Death March of 3 ½ to four miles. Well, maybe it’s a Death March if it’s 90º, or -5° and windy, but this day it was a breeze, with the marsh in a new palette of autumn colors, a splendid sunset, and—out by the Crane Creek estuary—mudflats, pools, and the narrow river channel, with 172 tundra swans purring and preening, maybe two thousand gulls and several hundred terns, and many shorebirds of ten species. Eight hundred or so Bonaparte’s gulls came within 50 yards to show us their cooperative feeding techniques for shoaling baitfish on the channel, the lead birds cycling back to the rear, the lower level dropping to the surface repeatedly to dart at fingerlings; the whole was done in bright low sunlight, and with the customary delicacy and good manners of the species—not a feeding frenzy, but a polite buffet line at a family reunion. The less-refined ringbills and herrings didn’t know what to make of it, but hung around in case some food dropped under the table. The best of the shorebirds was a chorus-line of eighty long-billed dowitchers, which stayed too distant along the northern water margin, causing us to wonder if the flocks that used to stage for molt at Metzger Marsh now use this area. We had three species of swans, the fat and lazy mutes and trumpeters, and the flock of wild tundras, fresh from a journey of a thousand miles. Waterfowl of a dozen species seemed to be massing in the outer impoundments; they seemed awfully skittish, as if they expected we had guns or something.
I have a list of additional species, courtesy of the rump group that left early for a stop at Killdeer: apparently they weren’t able to spot any early short-eared owls, something they’d hoped for. Their finds at KPWA not seen elsewhere are indicated by asterisks in the list of 77 species for the day which follows:
