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September 7, 2003 Avids in Shorebird Recovery by Bill Whan Despite the urging of some that we devote 10 months of the year to studying shorebirds, nine Avid Birders undertook an unusual Sunday outing aimed at more than just the Charadriiformes on 7 September 2003 . We abandoned a dawn patrol looking for jaegers and rare gulls because the winds were unfavorable, and went straight to Sheldon Marsh State Nature Preserve, where recent squawks and squeaks in the night sky persuaded us to search for southbound warblers, vireos, tanagers, orioles, thrushes, etc. We were rewarded. After an ominously silent walk down the entrance road and through the woods, we finally broke through into some sunlight and started finding passerine migrants. A few, anyway, with numbers of certain warblers exceeding the number of warbler species seen. After our long, dark, wet summer the weather was delightful, and the customary brief glimpses of silent and drabber-plumaged young and molted birds overhead in the heavy foliage was more than enough to entertain us for three hours in the Preserve. Great looks at three bright Philadelphia vireos constituted a highlight, and the usual array of problematic glimpses of immature females was educational for all. We’d heard the Chaussee a couple miles down the road had a lot of birds, so we cruised the area via vehicles first, finally deciding to steel ourselves for the perilous walk out onto the causeway. Despite the weekend tourist traffic we enjoyed finding and identifying 11 species of shorebirds among the huddled eclipsed ducks and the thronged terns, including a stilt sandpiper and a white-rumped sandpiper. After a brief and unsuccessful flyer at finding a buff-breasted sandpiper on the lawns of the nearby county airport, we set off for Ottawa NWR, not before a refreshing stop so some members could wash their hands at McD’s. We briefly diverted from our course to scrutinize Medusa Marsh, where very little was around; in fact, we had to look into ponds near the freeway to find even the ubiquitous mute swans. It hurt to hear later that another birder had seen the wandering tricolored heron there later that day. We met the ONWR census team at the Stange-Krause entrance, and proceeded with them into regions of the huge Ottawa complex pretty much unknown to the general public. Would we find fabulous birds thought to be extinct? A well-camouflaged complex of missile silos? A secluded Lakeside gathering of millionaires’ homes? We weren’t sure, as Ottawa doesn’t invite the public to these realms. We spent four hours—thankfully driving, for this would have been a march beyond death—in this terra incognita, seeing numerous diked impoundments, most of them with more water than usual after summer downpours, some relatively small woodlots, and the heavily-armored shoreline of Lake Erie, as well as that of the recently-constructed Lake Metzger. A lot of bird life was easily observed; though small passerines didn’t play a large part in the overall picture, we had lots of waterfowl, some shorebirds and waders, some raptors, and other birds. We gained a perspective on how large Ottawa is, and on its relative uniformity habitat-wise. No missile silos were seen, nor did we see anyone else of our species except where we met Crane Creek’s outlet into Lake Erie , at the site of a bait shop in the old days, where we waved at some bathers on the Crane Creek SP beach on the other side. We did learn that the entire shoreline at Ottawa , from the Crane Creek outlet to the west end of Metzger Marsh, had been diked off from Lake Erie only in 1988. Our best find—and the author may be prejudiced on this one—was the apparent rediscovery of the locally staging population of long-billed dowitchers, 90 of them. In years gone by, they’d spent a month or more at Metzger Marsh undergoing a complete molt, a phenomenon unknown elsewhere between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic coast; now it seems they’ve successfully relocated to a bywater of the Crane Creek estuary. In the end, we all learned more than a little about Ottawa NWR, enjoyed ourselves, and of course added to our day’s list of species. The aforementioned list probably exceeded a hundred, as our own vehicle-full came up with 99 on our own, to which others eligible are free to add their own. Here’s our list, in the AOU’s recently-newfangled order:
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