Greetings... About thirty people attended a birding tour of the Fernald site 
this morning. They broke us up into five or six groups, and gave us a 
sampling of the site. They believe the cleanup, which is costing something 
in the neighborhood of many billions of dollars, will be completed by June 
2006, after which public access to the area should become more open.

My group didn't come across a lot of birds, but other groups reported at 
least two Connecticut warblers, an olive-sided flycatcher, and an osprey, in 
addition to other birds. I imagine a combined list of some sort will appear 
on the Birding in Cincinnati site one of these days.

They are very welcoming of tours and field trips; as well, they're 
interested in finding people willing to help document the bird life there 
via surveys or other projects. Miami University and University of Dayton are 
doing some work--mostly on plant restoration and deer browsing, as I 
understand, and we some of their study plots--but they would be open to 
other projects, too. Most of the area is in Hamilton County, but there's a 
healthy chunk of it in Butler County up to about State Route 126 west of 
Ross.

There's a large buffer area around the actual nuclear processing site that 
was supposedly never used for storing or burying waste. This buffer area 
includes some nice riparian corridor along Paddy's Run, as well as some 
mature woodlots, open fields, and that sort of thing. Imagine the variety of 
habitats at nearby Miami-Whitewater Forest and Westlands jumbled up and 
pitched into the Great Miami River valley, and that's roughly what Fernald 
is: mature forest, open fields, wetlands, riparian, etc. It's a rather 
promising site.

Take care,
---Mike Busam
West Chester, OH