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		July 31, 2004    Through Rain, Sleet, or Snow the Avids Will Surely Go! by Brad Sparks There is one word to describe the weather on Saturday morning: crappy!  The rain was a steady downpour as I pulled into the parking lot at Worthington Square Mall.  The other four dedicated (or slightly deranged) people who had decided to join the trip were all sitting in their cars to stay dry.  When I arrived, we all took shelter under the lift gate of my SUV and talked about our plan for the day.  Deep down, I wanted to vote for going back to bed, but I had never heard of an Avids’ trip being canceled due to weather and I did not want to be the first leader to do so.  I mustered all of my positive attitude and suggested we head north to the western basin of Lake Erie where hopefully it would not be raining and the shorebirds would be plentiful.  The plan partly worked and we arrived at Metzger Marsh under gray, but dry skies.  Unfortunately, this is where a pattern began to develop for the day: water, water everywhere, but not a shorebird in sight!  The Crane Creek estuary at ONWR, the causeway at Crane Creek, Pickerel Creek, and Medusa Marsh were all waterlogged and lacking birds.  On the way home we did find some shorebirds at Big Island.  They were in the middle impoundment along LaRue-Prospect Road that was drained down for construction/destruction.  The trip list of only 68 species follows: Pied-billed Grebe Double-crested Cormorant Great-Blue Heron Great Egret Snowy Egret Green Heron Black-crowned Night-Heron Mute Swan Canada Goose Wood Duck American Black Duck Mallard Turkey Vulture Bald Eagle Northern Harrier Red-tailed Hawk Sora American Coot Killdeer Greater Yellowlegs Lesser Yellowlegs Solitary Sandpiper Spotted Sandpiper Sanderling Semipalmated Sandpiper Least Sandpiper Pectoral Sandpiper Ring-billed Gull Herring Gull Caspian Tern Common Tern Forster’s Tern Rock Pigeon Mourning Dove Chimney Swift Ruby-throated Hummingbird Belted Kingfisher Northern Flicker Eastern Phoebe Eastern Kingbird Purple Martin Tree Swallow N R-W Swallow Barn Swallow Blue Jay American Crow Carolina Wren House Wren Marsh Wren American Robin Northern Mockingbird Brown Thrasher European Starling Warbling Vireo Yellow Warbler Common Yellowthroat Northern Cardinal Indigo Bunting Dickcissel Song Sparrow Swamp Sparrow Red-winged Blackbird Eastern Meadowlark Common Grackle Brown-headed Cowbird House Finch American Goldfinch House Sparrow Page updated 04/04/05 © Columbus Audubon 2005