Today I was at Conneaut harbor from 7:00--11:15 AM, left for awhile to do some atlasing in nearby 33A7CE, and returned to the spit from 1:15--4:30 PM. Once again it was slow in the morning and real slow in the afternoon, but there some standout birds. A MERLIN made a couple appearances in the morning, and 3 AM. AVOCETS arrived in the morning and spent the day (mostly snoozing). I ended up with a rather puny total of 27 individual shorebirds, but diversity was OK with 10 species seen. This is actually rather typical for a July day there; numbers and variety should increase in August. The day's birds included bald eagles, semipalmated plovers, spotted sandpiper, solitary sandpiper, lesser yellowlegs (first juv.), sanderling, semipalmated sandpipers, least sandpipers, pectoral sandpiper, an imm. Bonaparte's gull, Caspian terns, belted kingfisher, n. rough-winged swallows, purple martins, 150 bank swallows, barn swallows, and yellow warblers. The
Port Authority was spiffing up the spit for a Dockfest tomorrow; a tractor was mowing down phragmites early, then came back and groomed the whole bare sand area of the spit. I hear that current plans for the spit include installation of Homeland Security cameras (are there really terrorists arriving by boat from Canada??) which means running electricity out there. Also an observation tower/deck for birders (!) is supposed to be built. Federal grant money will pay for both. Signs are going to be posted with some rules including: no ATVs, keep dogs on leashes, 10 mph speed limit, no vehicles in the water, and no dumping. Forget about a big dredging project--local politicos now see the sandspit as a potential tourist attraction and want to make money off it. They want to have more beach traffic, more windsurfing, and possibly allow primitive camping (local laws prohibit that now). They wanted to turn the lagoon into a marina, but ODNR (I
think) put the kebosh on that idea for the sake of wildlife (applause), So the future of the Conneaut sandspit for birds and birders is uncertain, as it always has been. Enjoy it while you still can. By the way, the clearing of phragmites this year is a positive for some birds, but marsh wrens didn't nest there this summer and you can forget about seeing least bittern there anytime soon. Craig Holt, Lowellville
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