I urge birding readers to attend Larry Rosche's talk "Birds of
Northeast Ohio" tonight at the Kirtland Bird Club--see VanValkenburg's
post here of 5/31 for details.
I was intrigued to be reminded that 376 bird species have been recorded
in the Cleveland region Rosche will be covering. This region has been
variously defined over the years, but now consists of seven counties
(Cuyahoga County plus the six contiguous ones). The total of 376 (see
Rosche's "Birds of the Cleveland Region," 2004) is an astonishing ~89%
of the species on Ohio's state list! This is more than nearly anyone's
Ohio list accumulated over a lifetime.
I wonder if any other comparable region in Ohio can match this. "Birds
of the Toledo Area (Anderson et al., 2002) lists 357 species for the
"Toledo Area," defined as all of one county and parts of four others.
Could the Toledo Area, if it were enlarged to include seven counties (or
an equivalent coverage) surpass the Cleveland Region's numbers? I
imagine other species have been added since them. It also does include
some "poaching," including a portion of Michigan territory...but then
the state border up that way has often been contested; I believe parts
of Ottawa and Magee once belonged to the Wolverines.
I wonder about the Cincinnati region, too. This, endowed with varied
habitat and excellent birders for over a century, probably has a dog in
the race, but I don't know where to find it. It's been a long time since
a work treating this region has been published. Kemsies and Randle's
1953 "Birds of Southwestern Ohio" covered all of four counties and parts
of two more, and includes many taxa regarded as subspecies now; I have
seen an unofficial estimate for Hamilton County alone of 333 species,
but this includes some questionable reports that would need to be
closely examined before publication.
I took a look at Central Ohio, too. Franklin County's list has around
330 of Ohio's 424 species. By adding records from just three adjacent
counties (cherry-picking Barrow's goldeneye, cinnamon teal, long-billed
curlew, pom jaeger, Sabine's gull, swallow-tailed kite, Harris' hawk,
painted bunting, groove-billed ani, harlequin duck, Pacific loon, Arctic
tern, white-winged dove, spotted towhee, gyrfalcon, black-headed
grosbeak, little gull, magnificent frigatebird, common raven, species no
one has seen all of in Ohio), I can get almost to 350, but I wonder if
choice finds in three other adjacent counties will get far enough to
match Toledo's number, let alone Cleveland's.
Significantly, these lists come from the four regions of the state
where you can see the most Homo sapiens, too. This of course does not
mean that the more people, the more varied the birding. These lists are
high at least in part because each region has a tradition more than a
century long of carefully recorded observations by competent students of
the local birdlife. Toledo and Cleveland also have the advantage of Lake
Erie as a unique ecological resource, and Cincinnati has the Ohio
River...but then so do Ironton and Steubenville. Having universities
helps, and local organizations and publications. It could well be that
the "Sandusky Area," if you count Ottawa, Sandusky, Erie, Seneca, Erie,
Huron, and Lorain counties, would have the longest list, but we'll
probably never know!
Bill Whan
Columbus
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