On the 11^th of June, ten of us set out to sample the birds of grasslands and forests of Coshocton and Ashland counties. We don’t always put on a June trip, but lately we have been cherry-picking some spots rich in breeding birds; most are in full song,  the scenery is lush, and not always is the weather forecast for temperatures near 90 and thunderstorms as it was this day. Our leader was local expert Greg Miller — actually, Greg’s an expert anywhere in North America — who ran away with the laurels for hero of the expedition. Greg was under the weather, so his famous ears were nowhere nearly as sharp as usual. Nor was his memory, for he left his binoculars, and his lunch, behind when we set out from the rendezvous in Coshocton. With his two most important birding senses impaired, and with fatigue dogging him all day long, Greg was able to put together a memorable trip nonetheless.

Woodbury Wildlife Area was our first stop. This sprawling patchwork of reclaimed strip-mine lands, woodlots large and small, and pocket-sized cattail marshes can only be sampled in a day visit. The strategy was to visit some of these varied habitats while seeing birds we’d be unlikely to encounter later in the day at Mohican.

We fine-tuned our hearing by passing through some grassy areas dotted with isolated shrubs, prime habitat for z’licking Henslow’s sparrows. Stops here and in fields with somewhat more shrubby successional growth soon had us hearing and finally getting good looks at this little skulker, its cousin the grasshopper sparrow, many chats, and all the commoner denizens of Ohio fields and grasslands. The vegetation looked good enough to eat, and the sun stayed behind clouds. We had lots of flycatchers, many willows and two surprising leasts.

A last stop in the grasslands brought us to the crown of a hill dotted with dump-truck loads of black mining spoil, where we encountered a rival birding gang; they were friendlies from the Wilderness Center in Stark County. A small pine plantation here was said to harbor the only prairie warblers we were likely to see this far north. The trees had grown a bit too large for the purpose, but we did find one last prairie. More unexpected was a young green heron defending a perch in a dead tree from a flicker, and an American bittern overhead who, failing to find any friendly surroundings, lumbered grumpily off into the distance.

We found some surprisingly dense forest tracts and edges, where repeated stops to listen produced lots of vireos, grosbeaks, tanagers, thrushes, flycatchers, and warblers — blue-winged, yellow, ovenbird, Kentucky, and hooded. A marsh — Woodbury’s largest — produced a swamp sparrow and a marsh wren, and we drove up to Mohican SP and SF.

We ate lunch among cool pines overlooking the beautiful wooded valley. No juncos, but we did hear a purple finch. Warblers, pines and black-throated greens serenaded from the trees, some of the vireos were blue-headeds, and distant yellow-throateds’ songs reached us from the sycamores far beneath. We had left Carolina chickadees behind, and entered the realm of black-cappeds. We added more woodland birds of northerly affiliations in the pines, then birded in lush woods along the Mohican River, where despite weekend crowds we were never far from singing veeries, patrolling Louisiana waterthrushes, or worm-eating, Canada, and cerulean warblers, along with orioles, Acadian flycatchers, and scarlet tanagers. Even in the dark woods the temperatures had become uncomfortable, and our group, peering intently into the leaves, was constantly blocking the woodland trails for the nonbirding, so we decided to call it a good day and adjourn, having added two first-rate birding locales to our repertoire.  Even failing to find a number of common birds — Carolina chickadee, white-breasted nuthatch are humbling examples — we ended up with 99 species, not bad at all for six pleasant hours in the field.  If you discount necessary urban stops for bathroom calls, we had single-digit counts of house sparrows and starlings, and only two small barnyard flocks of Canada geese.  A good day. Here’s the list.