The more avid among the Avids, celebrating our avidity, sometimes boast of trips through inclement weather. Our grizzled veterans, perhaps seeking to intimidate the young whippersnappers, tell tales of birds in blizzards, warblers whipped by the winds, phalaropes seen fleetingly in the fog, ducks diving through rain so heavy that it seemed like water itself, and hikes through the hot and humid haze of August afternoons. This trip, though, was just the opposite: unseasonably warm weather for November, with clear, sunny skies, the kind of day that makes all of us, and especially birders, happy just to be outdoors.
November Avid Birders trips over the years have been perhaps our most varied in terms of destinations. A few years back, we tended to visit reservoirs to the west of Columbus in search of waterfowl. Destinations in this part of the state have included Caesar Creek, Buck Creek, and other well-known birding locations in the Springfield-Dayton corridor. Over the past few years, we have succumbed to the charms of Lake Erie, heading headed variously to Fairport Harbor, Eastlake, Lorain, Huron, and other points along the fair shores. (Granted, the shores usually are not so fair in November, often being deluged by downpours or even sloppy with sleet and snow.) This year, hearing of no great rarities anywhere in the state and knowing that the weather would be wonderful, we decided to revisit the west, but with a slight variation: we planned a route visiting smaller, less birded reservoirs and lakes.
We started toward Findlay, with a beautiful sunrise lighting the way as we motored along on US 23. Temperatures were climbing quickly through the upper 40’s, and all boded well – except for a certain lack of birds. We quickly encountered a flock of perhaps 1,000 ruddy ducks, an impressive sight in itself, but without the variety of species for which we hoped.
None of us could remember the Avid Birders ever having visited Van Buren State Park just a few miles north of Findlay, so we decided to check it out. The lake there seemed to offer appropriate waterfowl habitat, but the waterfowl weren’t buying it. While the park’s Web site description as being “… surrounded by beautiful corn, wheat and soybean fields….” seems a bit over the top, we did manage to score a few woodland species in a forest remnant there.
We next moved on to Lima, which bids fair to be the upground reservoir capital of Ohio, with no fewer than five in place and a sixth under construction. Another few thousand ruddy ducks floated in a wide band across Spencerville Reservoir, but we also found small numbers of other species. The lovely weather continued as well, with temperatures heading into the 60’s by the time we left the area.
Heading down I-75, we made the trip official when two of our three cars headed off in the wrong direction on Ohio 33. (It’s not a real Avids trip until at least one car is separated from the group.) Cell phones to the rescue, we reunited at a pond near New Hampshire where we had been tipped off to the presence of Snow Geese. We found them quickly, then headed for our final stop of day, Indian Lake. Although a Franklin’s gull reported earlier was not hanging out near the beach, we were treated to wonderful looks at the more common Bonaparte’s gulls in light that can only be described as dazzling. By now, several of us were in shirtsleeves, as temperatures had reached well into the 60’s and the sun was warm. The sun was lowering in the sky, though, so we faced eastward and headed toward home. On the way, we listened to the start of the OSU football game, which ended well – what more could we ask for on such a beautiful day?
We ended up with a reasonable but certainly not exceptional list of 40 species:
Snow Goose
Canada Goose
Mute Swan
Mallard
Canvasback
Ring-necked Duck
Greater Scaup
Lesser Scaup
Surf Scoter
Bufflehead
Hooded Merganser
Ruddy Duck
Wild Turkey
Common Loon
Horned Grebe
Pied-billed Grebe
Cooper’s Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
American Kestrel
Peregrine Falcon
American Coot
Killdeer
Bonaparte’s Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Downy Woodpecker
Blue Jay
American Crow
Horned Lark
White-breasted Nuthatch
Brown Creeper
Eastern Bluebird
European Starling
American Pipit
Dark-eyed Junco
Snow Bunting
Northern Cardinal
American Goldfinch