There is one word to describe the weather on Saturday morning: crappy! The rain was a steady downpour as I pulled into the parking lot at Worthington Square Mall. The other four dedicated (or slightly deranged) people who had decided to join the trip were all sitting in their cars to stay dry. When I arrived, we all took shelter under the lift gate of my SUV and talked about our plan for the day. Deep down, I wanted to vote for going back to bed, but I had never heard of an Avids’ trip being canceled due to weather and I did not want to be the first leader to do so. I mustered all of my positive attitude and suggested we head north to the western basin of Lake Erie where hopefully it would not be raining and the shorebirds would be plentiful. The plan partly worked and we arrived at Metzger Marsh under gray, but dry skies. Unfortunately, this is where a pattern began to develop for the day: water, water everywhere, but not a shorebird in sight! The Crane Creek estuary at ONWR, the causeway at Crane Creek, Pickerel Creek, and Medusa Marsh were all waterlogged and lacking birds. On the way home we did find some shorebirds at Big Island. They were in the middle impoundment along LaRue-Prospect Road that was drained down for construction/destruction. The trip list of only 68 species follows:
Pied-billed Grebe
Double-crested Cormorant
Great-Blue Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Green Heron
Black-crowned Night-Heron
Mute Swan
Canada Goose
Wood Duck
American Black Duck
Mallard
Turkey Vulture
Bald Eagle
Northern Harrier
Red-tailed Hawk
Sora
American Coot
Killdeer
Greater Yellowlegs
Lesser Yellowlegs
Solitary Sandpiper
Spotted Sandpiper
Sanderling
Semipalmated Sandpiper
Least Sandpiper
Pectoral Sandpiper
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Caspian Tern
Common Tern
Forster’s Tern
Rock Pigeon
Mourning Dove
Chimney Swift
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Belted Kingfisher
Northern Flicker
Eastern Phoebe
Eastern Kingbird
Purple Martin
Tree Swallow
N R-W Swallow
Barn Swallow
Blue Jay
American Crow
Carolina Wren
House Wren
Marsh Wren
American Robin
Northern Mockingbird
Brown Thrasher
European Starling
Warbling Vireo
Yellow Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Northern Cardinal
Indigo Bunting
Dickcissel
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
Red-winged Blackbird
Eastern Meadowlark
Common Grackle
Brown-headed Cowbird
House Finch
American Goldfinch
House Sparrow