Our plan, made ten months earlier, aimed to avoid duplicating a January trip seeking the birds of deep winter, and instead sample the change of season, as the first hardy migrants, led by eager droves of waterfowl, arrived at our latitude. As it happened, our January date fell in the middle of a two-week span that averaged a jaw-dropping 13.8 degrees warmer than usual, inducing us to instead seek out late-lingering fall migrants like Ross’s goose and Nelson’s sparrow instead. Winter, it later turned out, could be delayed but not denied, and in many ways 24 Feb was bird-wise more like early January, with temps well below normal, deep snow, and ice-especially ice, keeping most waterfowl far south, driving field birds to blow-outs and the margins of plowed roads, and choking the estuaries and harbors. Fabled duck refuges like Wellington Reservoir were white wastelands, Lorain and Fairport harbors were socked in, and our best chance for the birds of the season seemed to be the warm-water outflows at Lake Erie shore power plants, where the news was of excellent looks at eight or nine species of gulls and hardy waterfowl in high plumage feeding in ice-free strips of water at Avon Lake, Cleveland, and Eastlake.
Mindful of the pitifully short and one-sided day lists we often bring home from midwinter trips to the Lake, we stopped at Columbia Reservation in Lorain County on the way, so we could at least return with chickadees and woodpeckers and cardinals on the list, species way too smart to spend any time on the frozen shore. At Avon Lake, a plume of hot water kept at bay miles of ice fields stretching to the horizon. Fishermen in waders sought steelhead in the shallows. There were not many gulls, maybe a few hundred, but a Thayer’s was found among them. A peregrine falcon was spotted watching us from an immense beam at the power plant. Perhaps a thousand ducks decorated the site, many already courting, and we found goodies like white-winged and surf scoters and long-tailed duck among at least a dozen species of hardy breeding-plumaged waterfowl.
East 72nd St, in the shadow of another power plant, had been the source of intriguing reports during previous days, and we arrived to find thousands of gulls and dozens of birders. The latter were not alert, though, and mostly talked among themselves. Throngs of gulls stood on the ice offshore, from a quarter to three-quarters of a mile away, too crowded and far off to make out more than the obvious species. We put in a goodly amount of time there, encouraged by bright sunlight and clement breezes, but could not come up with anything more than a few lesser black-backed gulls. Eastlake Power Plant, some fifteen miles farther east, was blocked off, and the entrance festooned by new signs promising arrest of ‘trespassers.’ We snaked our way to the far side of the river, and were able to talk a colorful local resident to allow us to look at the flocks from the west, whereupon we found our only glaucous gull of the day, and a lot more of the expected duck species.
We’d talked about slipping off the freeway to explore some rural lanes for longspurs, buntings, etc., on the way home, but the sun had melted so many holes in the snow cover that we figured these birds had dispersed widely by then, so we returned home, bearing the following list of 45 species snatched from the jaws of winter.
Pied-billed grebe
Horned grebe
Great blue heron
Canada goose
Mute swan
Am. black duck
Mallard
Canvasback
Redhead
Greater scaup
Lesser scaup
Surf scoter
White-winged scoter
Long-tailed duck
Bufflehead
Common goldeneye
Common merganser
Red-breasted merganser
Bald eagle
Cooper’s hawk
Red-tailed hawk
Am. kestrel
Peregrine falcon
Wild turkey
Am. coot
Ring-billed gull
Herring gull
Thayer’s gull
Less black-backed gull
Glaucous gull
Great black-backed gull
Rock dove
Mourning dove
Red-bellioed woodpecker
Downy woodpecker
Northern flicker
Blue jay
Am. crow
Black-capped chickadee
Tufted titmouse
White-breasted nuthatch
European starling
Song sparrow
Northern cardinal
House sparrow