If you have a better idea, let us know, but custom demands we publish a schedule of our little trips a year in advance. Vast is our knowledge, of course, and our secret contacts extend to the farthest reaches of the state. Still, it is widely known that the augury of the entrails of chickens, inhaled vapors from imported candles, and earnest consultations of Dr. Ouija also guide our choice of dates.
We have fairly clear ideas about when certain bird movements have taken place historically, and when the birding should be best. But these ideas depend on the unpredictable, with weather the bull-goose variable. Over the years I’ve been involved in setting dates—after the sacred demands of holidays, football schedules, and unfavorable astrological readings are taken care of—we’ve lucked out as often as we’ve been clobbered, and had other times when the weather just didn’t matter much. Only once in the last couple of decades has an Avids trip actually been cancelled, for a monster snowstorm. And, let it be said, there were more than a few times when weather we’d have otherwise avoided as too yucky turned out to be a stroke of luck.
September, for example, is a time of radical changes in our birdlife, including many of the same migrant species that so rev up birders in May. October is a bit tougher to call, but has enough interesting migrational events to guide decisions. November provides more radical changes: the southern birds are mostly gone, but the routine passage and return of northern nesters, the possibility that a few northern birds might begin unusual visits this far south, and some of the sheer spectacle of seeing hundreds of thousands of birds at once are what lure us afield at this time.
Anyway, it was mostly the chicken-guts and the Buckeyes’ home schedule that gave us the 8th as a date. Fortuitously, it was the first cold windy day after a languid week of temps in the 70s, during which not much had been happening, with an increasingly boring sequence of reports of pine siskins the big news. Waterfowl were not moving much yet, northern finches were mostly only rumors or putative calling flyovers, and the presence of rare or even unusual birds had been slight.
As it happened, temps struggled to reach the mid 40s, and winds were brisk. We started at the Cedar Pt. Chaussee, finding encouraging but impossibly distant rafts of ducks and swans and five species of lingering shorebirds, leading us to extemporize with a look at the main causeway to Cedar Pt., where an early glaucous gull was a find. The gull horde had by this time diminished somewhat at Huron, but we walked out nearly to the lighthouse. Waterfowl were few, and even hunters were scarce; we heard only a couple of shots fired in hunger all day. No loons either. But we admired the gulls, finding a lesser black-backed. A stop at Old Woman Creek featured locked doors for those seeking a restroom, but a nice flock of siskins. Lorain had copious flocks of Bonaparte’s gulls to look through, among which we found some lingering common terns and a laughing gull. The sky was gray, the winds cold and blustery, perfect gull weather. We headed toward Cleveland, stopping at Avon Lake where gulls were plentiful, ducks few, for another lesser black-backed. We stopped in Rocky River, and scanned a horizon with dark veils of rain, finding not a single waterfowl. Some phone calls to other Avids who’d been spending the weekend up here revealed that waterfowl were not numerous, and the snowy owl reported at the airport had not been refound.
We decided to zip back home via stops in Lorain County. We checked out the county airport for owls. We stopped at Oberlin Reservoir, devoid of ducks except for ruddies, but found four more lesser black-backeds and a pair of Franklin’s gulls. A stop at Caley Reservation didn’t produce long-eared owls. A final stop, as has become habitual, at Wellington Reservoir produced water birds, most of them Canadas and coots and ruddies, but enough others to keep us happily occupied on the chilly shore.
Eight gull species in the second week of November is a very good count. Wellington saved our waterfowl count, bringing our Anatidae to sixteen species. These and our shorebirds furnished half our final count of sixty-one species. It was a good trip.
The list follows:
Common loon
Pied-billed grebe
Double-crested cormorant
Great blue heron
Canada goose
Mute swan
Tundra swan
Gadwall
American black duck
Mallard
Green-winged teal
Canvasback
Redhead
Ring-necked duck
Lesser scaup
Bufflehead
Common goldeneye
Hooded merganser
Red-breasted merganser
Ruddy duck
Bald eagle
Northern harrier
Sharp-shinned hawk
Cooper’s hawk
Goshawk (possible)
Red-tailed hawk
American kestrel
American coot
Black-bellied plover
Killdeer
Least sandpiper
Pectoral sandpiper
Dunlin
Laughing gull
Franklin’s gull
Bonaparte’s gull
Ring-billed gull
Herring gull
Lesser black-backed gull
Glaucous gull
Great black-backed gull
Common tern
Rock dove
Mourning dove
Downy woodpecker
Blue jay
American crow
Black-capped chickadee
Tufted titmouse
Carolina wren
American robin
European starling
Yellow-rumped warbler
Song sparrow
White-throated sparrow
Dark-eyed junco
Northern cardinal
House finch
Pine siskin
American goldfinch
House sparrow