By the end of July, summer’s started to go a little long in the tooth. Many of our breeding birds have ceased singing, and many of those that haven’t have grown familiar enough that we don’t plan day-long trips to find them. It can be a fine time for rare vagrants, and many surrounding states seemed to have some in 2003, but in Ohio the biggest buzz was a laughing gull that’d disappeared several days before our trip date. But one novel event begins in July—the mass movement of adult shorebirds on their long migrations. More are around in fall, and more species than in spring, and certain conditions—lower Lake levels, draw-downs at reservoirs, prevailing winds—make them easier to locate. I myself would like to look for shorebirds, oh, maybe seven trips a year, but the late July one, like the August one belongs to these fascinating wanderers, when even those who prefer warblers or hawks or ducks have to agree.
Thirteen of us who met at the usual rendezvous heard of a change in plans. Dan Sanders had found out that the central dike at Big Island WA had some problems, and ODOW was pumping its water out to make repairs. Hundreds of shorebirds had dropped in for dinner, and this was our first stop. The light was perfect, and over a thousand birds obliged us. Twelve shorebird species were present, the most interesting of them—especially for an inland site—a sanderling and two Wilson ’s phalaropes (the first juvenile shorebirds of the year). With so many grasslands nearby, we briefly deviated from our focus to sample the birds of that habitat, finding bobolinks, dickcissels, grasshopper and Henslow’s sparrows, etc. before heading north.
We stopped for a while at a drowned swale in a Wyandot County farm field, which harbored excellent numbers of the commoner shorebirds, the neatest of which were the first two bright juvenile least sandpipers, but nothing new. We put the hammer down for Lake Erie’s shore, stopping only for restrooms—let’s not do this at Tiffin from now on—and took a pleasant ramble at Pickerel Creek, shunned by shorebirds but full of other life. We ate lunch with terns at Crane Creek SP, then went to Ottawa for the 4 ½-mile “Death March,” made less fearsome by cloudy skies and a nice SW breeze. The breeze had opened up some mudflats along Crane Creek, and while relatively few shorebirds had found them, we had plenty to look at, including a single very early (probably failed breeder) dunlin and nice numbers of dowitchers.
We made a few stops at rumored warm spots on the way back—one carload returned to Big Island to look for turnover (in fact there were fewer birds than earlier)—and got back to Columbus with a little of the day left. The August trip should eclipse this one easily, with our total of only 13 species of shorebirds and a day list of 80. Of the 80, many were heard in the distance, as we spent most of the day staring at mudflats.
Pied-billed grebe
Double-crested cormorant
Least bittern
Great blue heron
Great egret
Snowy egret
Green heron
Black-crowned night heron
Turkey vulture
Canada goose
Wood duck
Mallard
Blue-winged teal
Bald eagle
Cooper’s hawk
Red-tailed hawk
Rough-legged hawk (?!)
American kestrel
Virginia rail
Sora
Common moorhen
American coot
Semipalmated plover
Killdeer
Greater yellowlegs
Lesser yellowlegs
Solitary sandpiper
Spotted sandpiper
Sanderling (1)
Semipalmated sandpiper
Least sandpiper
Dunlin (1)
Short-billed dowitcher (89)
Wilson’s phalarope
Bonaparte’s gull
Ring-billed gull
Herring gull
Caspian tern
Common tern
Forster’s tern
Black tern (2)
Rock dove
Mourning dove
Yellow-billed cuckoo
Chimney swift
Belted kingfisher
Northern flicker
Willow flycatcher
Eastern kingbird
Blue jay
American crow
Horned lark
Purple martin
Tree swallow
Northern rough-winged swallow
Bank swallow
Carolina wren
House wren
Marsh wren
American robin
Gray catbird
European starling
Cedar waxwing
Yellow warbler
Common yellowthroat
Field sparrow
Gasshopper sparrow
Henslow’s sparrow
Song sparrow
Swamp sparrow
Northern cardinal
Indigo bunting
Dickcissel
Eastern meadowlark
Brown-headed cowbird
Baltimore oriole
House finch
American goldfinch
House sparrow