Deciding about our destinations was surprisingly easy this time. Sure, a few pine grosbeaks were reliable in Toledo, so reliable all you had to do was show up at 0845 any day at a designated spot and look in the direction everybody else was looking. Hardly adventurous enough for us; we provide more than car-pooling to stake-outs. Fresh news was fairly sparse otherwise in this usually productive time of year, so we mostly relied on a vast store of bird records under various climatic conditions, coupled with recent trends, to choose the shore of Lake Erie for our trip. An irruption of winter finches was well underway. Warm conditions had delayed freeze-ups, and waterfowl migration was still less than fully under way for a number of species. Small gulls were numerous at certain spots. After eleven of us showed up on a wet morning with the temperature hovering around freezing, we set out for the north.

Our most difficult decision involved whether to begin in the west or the east. Gulls were rumored in huge numbers at Huron at dawn, when the shad moved upstream in the river. On the other hand, we wanted redpolls, and thought they'd be easiest to find at established locales early. Flipping a mental coin led us to the latter, and our first stop was in a cemetery in Rocky River, where a flock of 39 common redpolls in a single fruiting birch tree quickly greeted us. All plumages were represented, even those of pale adult males who waited patiently while we painstakingly determined they were not hoary redpolls. A few "sucker-holes" in the cloud cover persuaded the hopeful we might see the sun later, and we jogged over to Bradstreet Landing and Rocky River Park, where other than passing skeins of mergansers-not as many as usual, it seemed--the most numerous waterfowl were black scoters. Here the writer discovered he'd jumped into the car before dawn without bringing along a jacket or a pair of gloves. This is a very ignorant act for a December Lake Erie trip, and I was soon lent spare garments; after all, Avon Lake-which some believe to be the shore's coldest spot, perhaps as a shallow peninsula with a high bluff that fluffs the winds-was next.

The temperature never fell into the twenties, but Avon Lake proved to be our coldest spot, even as the skies cleared completely. Here we saw the first gull multitudes. Large gulls were at a premium, and small Bonaparte's numbered in the single digits. That, of course, meant a lot of ring-bills. We did find five lesser black-backed gulls, three of them adults; they actually outnumbered great black-backeds. Very few waterfowl were present, though a nice long-tailed duck appeared, to be seen well by two of us, then vanished as it dived repeatedly and was swept up in a flush of ring-billed gulls.

Lorain Harbor beckoned next, and here most of the ring-billeds we saw were a few lazy individuals chasing industrious Bonaparte's who'd scored a fish. The Bonaparte's ruled here, with perhaps 7000 present, a beautiful spectacle of slinky little fishing gulls rolling in sweeping choreographed multitudes across the calm waters of the harbor. Reason demanded that a few little gulls would be present, but we couldn't find any. A very spiffy black-legged kittiwake cooperated very well for extended looks at close range, however, a good find. Again, waterfowl were hard to find; that had something to do with the hunters at most of the breakwall blinds, but other factors must have been at work, too. We considered walking in the impoundment for dicky-birds, but the prospect of deep mud dissuaded us. Yes, a pusillanimous decision, but nothing really tasty beckoned.

We stopped long enough at Old Woman Creek to add the usual feeder birds to our list. Huron Harbor, recent venue for a Sabine's gull, a gannet, and little gulls, drew us next. We ran into birders who told us hunters were spooking the birds (and hunters thought birders were spooking the birds), but pointed out an immense cloud of gulls and waterfowl perhaps ¾ of a mile offshore, which were perhaps taking advantage of shoaling fish. There the birds stayed, at an impossible distance, throughout our stay. We'd have been better off with more time in Lorain. An unfrozen tract along the Cedar Point Chaussee produced a few ducks and geese and swans along the way west.

Plans for the homeward leg involved finding flocks of snow buntings and longspurs in fields in Wyandot County, and we took an unfamiliar rural route in that direction, as numerous lines of geese passed overhead. In one a runty pale individual was a cackling goose, a nice find. Our bunting fields were empty except for a huge roost of hundreds of geese, among which two white-fronted geese were found. We decided we had time for a stop at Killdeer, where our best find was four short-eared owls at dusk. Our trip list was unusual for one so devoted to the Erie shore. Waterfowl were sparse, but we had enough land birds to make it less one-dimensional. A total of fifty-six species was not bad under the circumstances.