Greetings!

If you are looking for a place to get your shorebirds down this weekend,
without going all the way to the lake. Pond 27 will probably be your best
bet in central Ohio.  They have drawn the water down to about two, maybe
three, inches at it's deepest, so there is lots of "shoreline" for the
birds to be. Lots of everything normal for this time of year...except
Dowitchers...weirdly.  There has been HUNDREDS of birds to sort through at
points along the front of the edge which is easy binocular range.  The back
edge is  scope-able but there has been a lot of heat distortion so have fun
with that. :-D  There was an American Avocet that was spotted early last
week, and gave good views to everyone for over a week, but as of yesterday,
it has moved on. I looked for about an hour, with and without a scope,
without any success.

Blogged a little bit about it here:
http://www.sjlarue.com/blog/2014/8/of-avocets-part-2

Without a scope I had:

Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs
Stilted Sandpipers
Solitary Sandpipers
Least Sandpipers
Semipalmated Plovers
Pectoral Sandpipers
Semipalmated Sandpipers
and of course Killdeer

With a scope, whatever amount there were in front...were tripled.  LOTS of
birds along the back edges. :-D

____


Big Island has been less about Shorebirds and more about Wading birds.
Egrets, Great Blues, have been hanging out all over the place.

Least Bitterns have been hiding in the cat tails at the above ground pond
that goes along where the old Hoch Rd roadbed used to be. That would be
here: 40.587185, -83.237106 .  They have been making calls like a Rail...or
chicken...more of a clacking/cackling than their normal chuckle. I had both
a Juvi and an adult, as well as a third that flew of into an area farther
down the pond.  They were spotted there again yesterday.
Blogged a little about that here:
http://www.sjlarue.com/blog/2014/8/where-are-you-i-cant-see-you

 Also Common Moorhen and Pied-billed Grebes have been all over the pond,
and a marsh wren was singing along the north edge's bed of Cattails.

Incidentally as I was walking the pond's East edge (along the telephone
poles)  I heard Sedge Wrens over in the wetland area to the East of the
pond.  So I walked along the edge of the ditch that runs along there and
counted four.  Three were singing back in the reeds, the fourth was working
the ditch line. Also had a Henslow Sparrow back along the back (north) edge
of the pond.

Have a great weekend.

Happy Birding, and God Bless!


Steve J.

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