An upstart group of revanchist Avids, led by retired Central Committee Commissar Dave Horn, broke free from the established schedule of outings to raid northeastern Ohio for its best birds on 17 February. Though invited in a hastily-prepared manifesto posted on Avids bulletin-boards, many members chose to remain home to prepare for next weekend’s heroic venture into the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean, and only nine of us convened in the first of the day’s many snow squalls at the carpooling site during the morning darkness. Maximum Leader Horn’s tight schedule had us bringing everyone’s Ohio year list up to par, and featured some sweetening for those of us who’d seen many of the star birds of the preceding weeks.
Rosy-fingered Dawn lit up the clouds partway up to Fairport Harbor, where we dismounted to stand for as long as we could stand it at the water’s edge, 20-knot winds out of the north ripping bitter tears from our eyes, to stare at wheeling flocks of the usual species of gulls 600 yards offshore. We walked the perimeter of some excellent northern shrike habitat on the edge of town, but found no birds taking advantage of it. Nobody blamed the locals for hunkering down in the sub-zero wind chill, either. Steely-nerved as always, the Revered Leader obeyed my shout to “Stop!” right on a set of RR tracks as I checked to make sure a nearby Kestrel was just that.
Our next stop, we hoped, held more predictable birds, and at Holden Arboretum we split into Solitaire and Crossbill groups. Both were successful, and the former arrived back at the rendezvous just in time to eyeball the red crossbills located by the latter. Astutely recognizing birders on a roll, new companion Tiny Elliot joined us, and we rolled on, a battered pickup with West Virginia plates now in the retinue. We met up with Greg Miller in Apple Creek, who’d kindly laid out a tour of Wayne and Holmes counties for us, beginning right on the spot with another look at the persistent Harris’s sparrow for some of us, and a first look for others.
In Holmes County we explored a splendid old barn to find a male barn owl looking imperiously down on us, then were invited into the blessedly warm farmhouse where the property owners showed us photos and videotapes of their owls, who were caring for five eggs at the time. Refreshed, we exposed ourselves to the elements, which by now included a goodly amount of sunshine, on the Funk Bottoms tower to squint at waterfowl behind a line of trees a third of a mile off across sheets of ice. No greater white-fronted geese could be picked out, but goose-bumps were universal by the time we descended for the rest of our tour, which included more duck-dots far off, sparrow and blackbird flocks on a back road, a pair of barred owls occupying opposite windows in a barn, and a trio of snow geese in Wright Marsh in Killbuck. The sunset was incendiary, but accompanied by a further drop in the temperatures, and we packed it in, totaling our day’s list of 56 species with slowly-thawing fingers as we headed home.