Our usual September strategy involves enjoying the ongoing migratory spectacle among the shorebirds during the middle of the day, and spending the morning and late afternoon with the waves of neotropical passerines that have begun to hit the beaches of the south shore of Lake Erie . By September weather has usually started to cool off, with signs of autumn, and there are those—certainly not I of course—who welcome looking for something other than shorebirds by this time.
Fifteen of us set out in an orderly way, the leaders having artfully concealed the fact that we planned to do a lot of improvising. The others politely assented to our sketchy plans. Our plan was to emulate the birds, and head out as migrants to find good habitat where it existed, there being little fresh news of great concentrations of it. Sheldon Marsh State Nature Preserve was our first birding stop, and we were able to find a lot of warblers, vireos, and the like only 75 yards in from the parking lot. Farther into the woods, we heard innumerable whistled “whut”s of Swainson’s thrushes, “bzzz”s of waxwings, and the songs and calls of breeders, but the warblers tapered off quickly, and even the very buggy willows on the beach were bereft of migrants.
After some hasty and clandestine consultations, leaders announced the next stop—the nearby Huron River flats. Once there, we stood like knuckleheads on the railroad tracks just south of a sharp curve to scope out distant shorebirds. Numbers were fairly good, but looks were not, though we managed to pick out an American golden-plover and a couple of Wilson ’s phalaropes among the more common species. Luckily, no trains showed up.
Medusa Marsh was our next stop, and it looked like a Florida bayou when we arrived. Not the mute swans, of course, but the 330+ great egrets spangling the distant shallows, and the roosts of terns, even the scattered shorebirds. The light here is never good, and made it hard to identify the few drab eclipsed ducks present.
It had grown hot, and a stop for ice cream was welcomed by all, even though it forestalled or even prevented the consumption of carefully-packed healthier lunches. But there was a pleasant breeze, and the Ottawa Death March was elected. Once out to the estuary, we found fairly deep water. A group of gulls in belly-deep produced a great black-backed, but it was only after ¾ of mile’s walk that we saw a bit of mudflat with a few shorebirds. A bit further on, Brad spotted a red-necked phalarope, something to make the long walk worth it. The rest of the trek was enlivened mostly by our customarily witty conversations, though some wary trumpeter swans, with their green-and-white fieldmarks, were the avian high point for some.
Hoover Reservoir was our fall-back spot. Hopes for it had grown correspondingly high as our results thus far had proved mediocre. Here we would find the surprisingly elusive—for everyone in the state thus far this season—buff-breasted sandpiper, and here we might get another flight of warblers in the late afternoon. After the long drive, we found ourselves at a Hoover Reservoir some of us had perhaps forgotten from earlier years—a vast expanse of empty mudflats, a bloated sun whose intense heat seemed unduly magnified by heavy haze, and poor footing, all made less bearable by the small number of birds present. We found only unsatisfactory views of one new species for the day, and soon retreated to the shade of the trees and the overtaxed air-conditioners of our cars.
We are beginning to build up some comparable records. Last year our September trip took place on the 8th. We had 104 species, with 15 warblers and 19 shorebirds among them. Among shorebirds, we had eight red-necked phalaropes, eight red knots, 15 Baird’s sandpipers, and a dunlin. We saw one flock of ~3000 common terns. The year before on the 9th, we had 113 species, with 19 shorebirds (including three red-necked phalaropes, 50+ sanderlings, plus three avocets), and 13 of warblers. Looks like the first week of September is good for red-necked phalaropes, doesn’t it? On 4 September 1999 , the opening of bird shooting season and high water everywhere kept shorebirds down to 14 species, and our warbler count was only FOUR, even after an afternoon search at Sheldon Marsh, with a day’s count of only 82. This year we didn’t do much better, tallying 90, with 16 shorebirds and eight warblers; judging from this and other forays, both were running late this year, and shorebird habitat was scanty.
