For the week before our 16 February trip, the winter’s mild weather produced little in the way of interesting bird news around the state, so we’d pretty much decided to go through the usual magical motions to see what turned up. Then came a last-minute report that a plume of warm water at the generating plant at E. 72nd Street in Cleveland had attracted gulls of eight species; this was more than enough to give us a starting point.
Lots of gulls awaited us when our four carloads arrived at Lakefront State Park. Oh, there were a few ragamuffin house sparrows, and the occasional mallard, but the show was gulls, thousands of them, some just a few yards off the rocky shore, constantly churning and splashing, still more loafing in rafts way off in the relatively unruffled waters. A couple of hours of scrutiny in gusty winds yielded us six lesser black-backed gulls, one glaucous gull, an Iceland gull, 100 or so Bonaparte’s gulls, perhaps 200 great black-backed gulls, and uncounted zillions of herring and ring-billed gulls. Looks at the white-winged gulls were short and distant for the glaucous, and lengthy but still distant for the Iceland.
Another faraway look, from maybe 600 yards, this time of a snowy owl at Burke airport, came a bit up the road. Most of us drove right by the USS Cod and the red-throated loon just beyond it in the harbor, but one carload of us, already separated from the pack, managed to find it. Looking for gull concentrations, we peeked into favored spots along the shore to the west, stopping only to confirm once again that there were no scoters at Rocky River Park. No remarkable numbers of birds were at Avon Lake Power Plant, but a very accommodating first-winter glaucous gull entertained everyone as it floated around near the pier. Just a bit to the east, a guy fishing in the power plant channel kept most of the gulls offshore and spooked a snowy owl into hiding to boot.
Lorain’s birds were either hunkered down on the marina docks in the 25-mph winds, or swirling nervously around in the hot waters basin, and beyond another two lesser black-backeds we found nothing remarkable other than a dark-mantled herring gull that kept us staring for quite a while, marveling once again at the variability of this common species. Wondering how long we’d be able to keep dealing with shades of gray, we decided on one more shoreline stop, at Huron harbor, before we changed our theme.
Huron was at its best for watching all the gulls go by. Perhaps ten thousand covered the riverbanks, stood in the shallows just off the pier, bobbed on the water, or hovered over the channel as far as the lighthouse. Both here and at Lorain the proportion of ring-bills had been quite high, not an encouraging sign for unusual gulls. The cloudy gusty sky overhead was clouded again with their ever-shifting multitudes. But there were a few other species in the pier-side roost, and we spent most of our time studying a white-winged gull that spent a lot of time in play, bathing and carrying around a piece of flotsam. Eventually we got some good looks, and with the help of stills from digital photos made sure it was the day’s first Thayer’s gull, in seldom-seen second-winter plumage. This, a life bird for a couple of our eleven remaining stalwarts, was our eighth gull species, and we turned inland toward terra firma.
Five and a half hours of birding had yielded us only a couple of dozen species thus far, but we picked up a few on the way to Killdeer before storm-clouds ugly as bruises flung ice and cold water, and everything in between, at us. The skies began to clear as we alit at Pond 27, to find the hordes of waterfall gone. Stubborn, we were able to pick out a few individuals of thirteen waterfowl species way over on the north side among the skimpy numbers remaining. Four greater white-fronted geese briefly cruised out from behind an island, bringing much relief to the Branch Avidians. Out in the distance, thousands and thousands of waterfowl winged across the sky, but few landed within sight. Shrike hikes and further ganders at geese yielded nothing worth mentioning, and eventually another car split off, to look for owls at Big Island WA on the way home. Our group of seven stayed long enough to see the day’s northern harriers—we had eleven at once in one field just across from the Sportsmen’s Center—abruptly give way to the night shift, when six short-eared owls invaded the same field. A tough place to be a vole. As we drove out, we counted seventeen other cars full of birders there to observe the spectacle, and you have to wonder if the folks who manage Killdeer know about the thousands of birders who visit the place, unobtrusively and without taking anything away. For the day, our farflung forces sorted the tens of thousands of birds seen into 50 species, and here are their names:
