Late August brings its own events for birders. Swallows gather into huge flocks. The first migrant warblers can be found, as well as the first small gulls. By and large, however, these phenomena are less alluring than the passage of shorebirds leaving the breeding grounds, and their progeny, behind in the Arctic and heading south for our winter. More shorebird species pass through Ohio in the fall migration than warblers pass through in spring. Because shorebirds’ habitats are few and far between in Ohio, and are wide-open settings where viewing is easy, they are not that hard to find. Getting to know such a large group of birds—some are easy to identify, and some are very tough—is a big project, especially when they are around only a few weeks a year. Just the kind of challenge avid birders enjoy.
Twelve of us set out prepared for the “violent storms” envisioned by the Weather Service, and continuous thunder and leaden skies were indeed what we found at our first stop, Maumee Bay State Park. The approach of fronts is often accompanied by the passage of birds, though, and MBSP was accommodating. We had five species of shorebirds around the lagoon, the best a long-billed dowitcher, and another two—spotted sandpipers and ruddy turnstones—on the beach. Most of the swallow species boiled in the air and shot overhead. A big larid roost showed us every plumage variation of common, Forster’s, and Caspian terns, as well as ring-billed, herring, and Bonaparte’s gulls. The first raindrops pelted us as we set off for Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, and when we began the drive along the auto tour route we were glad for the chance to be in vehicles in the gathering storm. The rain abated a couple of times, long enough for us to pop outside and look around, and identify some good sites. By the time we reached the end of the tour, the front had passed and the rain stopped, so we went round again.
This time we stopped frequently, and long enough to study at least three good concentrations of birds. We leapfrogged with a larger group from the Wayne County area, and found ten more shorebird species, some in large numbers. In places there were so many birds, moving so quickly about as they fueled up for their trips to South America, that when you found a good one it was hard for your companions to locate it. We found other birds, too—sedge wrens, black terns, snowy egrets, and the like—and our birding was enlivened by the presence of two new friends from the Netherlands, for whom many of the birds were new as well.
Our repeated loop left us no time for a leisurely lunch on the beach at Crane Creek, so we shot straight over to Medusa Marsh, where the light was less than prime as usual, but the large numbers of egrets spangling the shallows promised some birds at least. On the first scan of the island shores we ran across a fivesome of phalaropes, three Wilson’s and two red-necked, twirling in the water. We found plenty of stilt sandpipers, our first of the day. Ducks in deep eclipse plumage forced us to identify most of them by silhouette. A young little blue heron was found.
Our time allowed us a visit to Hoover Reservoir, and we headed that way. Again, we were lucky, as some pretty scary weather hammered us on the way down, but had just passed when we reached the upper end of the reservoir. The sun emerged in the sky just as we emerged from the trees onto the mudflats, and the birds were just shaking the water from their feathers. We didn’t find any species new for the day, but we got excellent looks at quite a few species and plumages before we called it a day. We had twenty species of shorebirds, and saw quite a few other birds as a byproduct; the list of 86 species seen on 20 August 2005 follows.
Canada goose
Mute swan
Wood duck
Gadwall
American black duck
Mallard
Blue-winged teal
Green-winged teal
Hooded merganser
Pied-billed grebe
Double-crested cormorant
Great blue heron
Great egret
Snowy egret
Little blue heron
Green heron
Black-crowned night-heron
Turkey vulture
Bald eagle
Northern harrier
Red-tailed hawk
American kestrel
Sora
Semipalmated plover
Killdeer
Greater yellowlegs
Lesser yellowlegs
Solitary sandpiper
Ruddy turnstone
Semipalmated Sandpiper
Western sandpiper
Least sandpiper
Baird’s sandpiper
Pectoral sandpiper
Dunlin
Stilt sandpiper
Buff-breasted sandpiper
Short-billed dowitcher
Long-billed dowitcher
Common snipe
Wilson’s phalarope (5)
Red-necked phalarope
Bonaparte’s gull
Ring-billed gull
Herring gull
Caspian tern
Common tern
Forster’s tern
Black tern (8)
Rock dove
Mourning dove
Chimney swift
Belted kingfisher
Downy woodpecker
Northern flicker
Willow flycatcher
Eastern kingbird
Warbling vireo
Blue jay
American crow
Purple martin
Tree swallow
Northern rough-winged swallow
Bank swallow
Barn swallow
Carolina wren
Sedge wren
Marsh wren
Eastern bluebird
American robin
Gray catbird
Northern mockingbird
Brown thrasher
European starling
Common yellowthroat
Chipping sparrow
Field sparrow
Song sparrow
Northern cardinal
Indigo bunting
Red-winged blackbird
Eastern meadowlark
Common grackle
Baltimore oriole
American goldfinch
House sparrow