Despite persistent showers and falling temperatures, 11 of our hardiest showed up at the old meeting-place on 29 March 2003. At 4:00 a.m., Marietta had been at 64 degrees, Columbus at 47 with rain, and Dayton had 33 degrees and snow. A trip west seemed like madness, but we were to luck out as after a wet drive through quarter-sized snowflakes we emerged from the storm in snowy fields—but not snowy air—at Buck Creek State Park in Clark County, the back edge of the front’s precipitation behind us. We spent an hour or so at this dark, mist-shrouded, and chilly location, finding some gulls so far out they couldn’t definitely be called Franklin’s, and missing the four pelicans previously reported.
A welcome period in heated vehicles brought us to Spring Valley WA, where we noticed a big contrast with the visits we usually make here in late April to this spot. The dam was ruptured, the lake a mix of rain-pools and mud. No ospreys or bitterns, no prothonotaries, no vireos. Instead we had a couple of swamp sparrows and towhees, some swallows, only a few Canada geese and other waterfowl, a handful of shorebirds, and a Virginia rail Brad lured out of the cattails with a tape. Bill Heck joined us, and let us know he’d been luckier than we, and had seen two white pelicans at Buck Creek. We backtracked to a quarry pond where we’d seen some waterfowl, and found distant grebes—three horned and two red-necked—and coots and ducks. A turkey vulture without a tail was a strange sight as he soared above, and we had some exciting moments before we found one breeding-plumaged small grebe had a red neck rather than a black one.
We stopped to verify nothing interesting was on Caesar Creek Lake (though we were to find out later another birder had seen four white pelicans there at almost the same time), then after some unaccustomedly democratic consultations decided to go on to Rocky Fork State Park, where upon driving in we saw four great egrets—no, they’re pelicans!—in flight. We spent some pleasant time watching these giant birds, which had been present since Monday, and finding Caspian terns (first reported in the state this year), barn swallows, cormorants, and many ducks and gulls.
With such good luck at reservoirs, we stopped at nearby Paint Creek SP, but the lake had been drawn down and supported only some distant flocks of scaups. It was still cold, about 40°F, and the 15-knot winds—other than contributing to an uncomfortable wind chill—were keeping perching birds hidden, so we decided to skip a stop at Scioto Trail State Park ’s forests and glades for some other attractions along Route 23. Our first stop was at the Pickaway County airport, where we lucked into a mixed flock of sparrows—song, chipping, savannah, field, and vesper—close by in a plowed field; a superb male harrier there was our only one of the day. Charley’s Pond and the nearby Pickaway Ponds swale were carefully scrutinized, but other than a few ducks and some pectoral sandpipers we struck out. Stage’s Pond was judged too much of a walk for the time remaining, so we satisfied ourselves with a visit to the recently-reoccupied nest site of yellow-crowned night-herons in Columbus on the way home, where the birds themselves were absent, but their ungainly and seemingly makeshift nests, one of them now two years old, seemed to have survived the weather quite well.
After a few days of 70°F and sunny skies, the weather was intimidating, but we managed to do pretty well, picking up many birds of the season plus a few of the rarer visitors. Our list for the day was a respectable 74 species, as follows:
