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August 28, 2004 Avids’ August Adventure by Bill Whan The weather predictions were dire, with great splashes of storms splashed red and green and yellow like spilled guacamole across the NOAA radar map on 28 August 2004. Travelers were advised to delay travel, birders to delay birding. The Avids, always, rose to the challenge. Five months ago the Ouija board, hot chiles, and beer used by our fearless leaders had helped to choose this day, and five Avids at least lurched forth on the ordained course. The sun didn’t show up at the appointed time during our journey north. Lowering clouds became more obvious in the dim light, however, their rugged outlines illuminated along the northern horizon by repeated hot-pink stabs of lightning. When we first stopped, at Killdeer Plains, the lightning show was continuous, and a pale, shifting veil to the south told us rain was headed our way. We took our time all the same. Advancing quietly, we saw one king rail, then perhaps another, then another sailing awkwardly across the road to land in a soybean field. Pretty nice first bird for the day list, no? We listened to a variety of unidentifiable low squawks and grunts of other marsh birds, which we were pretty sure included Virginia rails, soras, bitterns, and wrens, but a wall of rain cut short our scrutinies. We scooted north in advance of the rain, seeing our first shorebirds within a few miles, one lesser yellowlegs and several of the eponymous killdeers. Fortified by coffee in Upper Sandusky, we sped toward Lake Erie ahead of hammering black fists of thunderous clouds. On our rapid journey north, we thought about our friends sleeping in their beds, so certain that bad weather would devalue or even cancel our day afield, and wondered what the day would bring. We found less troubled skies and dry roads as we sped on. We stopped at Toussaint WA for a bit, then pulled into the Ottawa parking lot. Even some of our stalwarts had mentioned how risky it might be to walk a couple of miles out into the open marshes during a thunderstorm, lugging long metallic objects like scopes with tripods, but things looked pretty good. We took what we have always called the “Death March,” a 4-5 mile trek out to the Crane Creek Estuary and back, and even though the estuary was nearly devoid of birds, we hit pay-dirt just before we turned inland. We spent a couple of hours at what the bureaucrats call Area 2-A, finding gulls, terns, and shorebirds in a drawn-down impoundment. The shorebirds were the treat of the season, and we found a pretty good number—several hundred, and 14 species. We circled the area, hoping to find more, but the fun was ended in a spectacular way with repeated strafings by an adult peregrine falcon that spooked all the other birds, except the snoozing ducks and geese. We checked Crane Creek SP beach, finding a few fishers and some beach-walkers, then ate lunch there, watching gulls and terns. Eschewing the Bird Trail, we moved on to Medusa Marsh, where water was so high that only a few yellowlegs were found, along with lots of egrets—great and snowy—a few terns, and many mute swans. A run to Pipe Creek WA in Sandusky yielded a few shorebirds and terns, and some night-herons as expected. Pipe Creek was gearing up for teal-shooting season in a couple of days, and the water was up, the teals down, and even the shorebirds quite spooky for some reason. We did find a few of the latter, the best of them a willet. We checked out Eagle Point, a new Erie County park just east of Sandusky, and decided it looked like a good spot to explore during spring passerine migration, than cruised the old Cedar Point Chaussee, concluding that another 4-6 inches of water had to disappear before it became of substantial interest to shorebirds, gulls and terns, etc. We were planning to head south on River Rd in Huron to take a look at the mudflats in the Huron River when the rain finally caught up with us, raking in from the south and persuading us to head home. Our list, at least in its length, suffered from little time spent in varied habitats, but we did all right with our targeted shorebirds. Our list came out at 81 species, hampered as we were by the weather and lack of habitat diversity. Here it is:
Page updated 04/04/05 © Columbus Audubon 2005 |
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