Many have wondered why the Avid Birders’ schedule fails so often to coincide with the occurrence of interesting birds. Time and time again, your leaders’ plans seem to conflict with those of nature, and send us out a week before, or after, some natural event involving interesting bird phenomena happens. Such was the case here, when our scheduled 25 April trip to southern Ohio to greet the first big wave of Neotropical migrants was on the books, but some fabulous bird occurrences two weeks earlier beckoned.
Adjusting as best as our creaking bureaucracy could, a trip was put together, participants notified, routes planned. We spurned the mountain bluebird near Toledo, reckoning that after its two-week stay at a reliable location, any truly avid birder would surely have ventured to find it. We were more interested in an apparently stable flock of Smith’s longspurs that had been located in Mercer County. Based on what we know of this species in migration, we figured chances were good they would remain, and even increase in numbers, for a while, so we planned an unofficial trip to see them. They have been very hard to find in Ohio for decades, due in large part to the remote and otherwise unbirdworthy nature of the terrain they use, and the disinclination of observers to seek them out.
So it was that eleven of us gathered at the usual time and place, including some members whose life lists are so long that our regular outings furnish little hope for lengthening them. Soon after dawn, we joined a dozen others at the vantage point and had repeated looks at Smith’s out in a cornfield. Troy had done the bird-dogging ahead of time, and smoothed things for everyone. He also supplied some local know-how by leading us to a spot nearby where perennial overflow from the St. Marys River created flooded woods, basins, and mud flats, where we spent a happy hour watching shorebirds and gulls and cranes and waterfowl skim in to feed and rest.
From there we went to Celina, where we first visited Wendy’s, the very center of the local population of Eurasian collared-doves (maybe ten pairs). No soap, nor was much to be seen at the stingy public access to Mercer WA farther south. A side-trip to the Coldwater water-treatment plant was good for waterfowl, and upon the continuation of our search for doves each of our vehicles located one simultaneously. We later found they were members of a breeding pair, as they were observed carrying nesting material. Our veterans, recalling similar urban searches in Los Angeles for turtle-doves, Vancouver for crested mynas, and of course the suburbs of Miami for any number of species of similar origins, were vastly relieved that this one was over.
On our way back, Troy alerted us to a large flooded area near Indian Lake, where we spent a happy hour adding five species to our day list, and hundreds to our numbers of some shorebird species such as Am. golden-plovers and pectoral sandpipers. A good day in NW Ohio for all, with a total of ~20 life/Ohio birds for various lists, and a day list of 81 species (not bad, considering we never got very close to any trees), which follows:
Canada goose
Wood duck
Gadwall
American black duck
Mallard
Blue-winged teal
Northern shoveler
Northern pintail
Green-winged teal
Rng-necked duck
Lesser scaup
Bufflehead
Hooded merganser
Red-breasted merganser
Ruddy duck
Wild turkey
Common loon
Horned grebe
Double-crested cormorant
Great blue heron
Great egret
Turkey vulture
Osprey
Bald eagle
Norhern harrier
Sharp-shinned hawk
Cooper’s hawk
Red-tailed hawk
American kestrel
American coot
Sandhill crane
American golden-plover
Killdeer
Spotted sandpiper
Solitary sandpiper
Greater yellowlegs
Lesser yellowlegs
Pectoral sandpiper
Wilson’s snipe
Bonaprte’s gull
Ring-billed gull
Herring gull
Caspian tern
Rock pigeon
Mourning dove
Eurasian collared-dove
Red-bellied woodpecker
Downy woodpecker
Northern flicker
Blue jay
American crow
Horned lark
Purple martin
Tree swallow
N. rough-winged swallow
Barn swallow
Chickadee sp.
White-breasted nuthatch
Carolina wren
Ruby-crowned kinglet
Americanrobin
Brown thrasher
European starling
Cedar waxwing
Yellow warbler
Chipping sparrow
Field sparrow
Vesper sparrow
Savannah sparrow
Song sparrow
White-throated sparrow
Smith’s longspur
Kard-eyed junco
Lapland longspur
\northern cardinal
Red-wnged blackbird
Eastern meadowlark
Common grackle
Brown-headed cowbird
American goldfinch
House sparrow