I have been lax in making these postings this past week, so they are
starting to pile up on me.
Last Tuesday, (12/5) we went to Salt Fork to look for waterfowl, of which we
found almost none, though a flock of 100 plus mallards at Green Trail Marsh
was quite impressive. They flushed from back in the weeds where we could
barely see them to fly about in the sky, continually circling for longer than we
cared to stand and watch (which was quite a while). Tim said it looked like
we were on the east coast. Even though we bombed out on waterfowl, we did
pretty good on songbirds, finding 17 species, including 3 Pieleated
Woodpeckers. We also saw 11 different Red-tailed Hawks in the park, 1 more just
outside of the park & 2 more on the way home. And it may also be of interest to
some, that while driving around the wildlife areas of Salt Fork, we saw NO
deer, but as soon as we entered the state park area, specifically the road to the
cabins & lodge, we saw at least 15-20. Don't know how they know exactly
where it is safe & where it isn't but they do.
We have seen a few kestrals lately, but I don't feel we are seeing as many
as we used to. On 12/5, at about 4:30 PM, we saw 1 on Rt 36W between
Coshocton CR 83 & SR 93. This is an area where we used to commonly see several on
any given drive. Yesterday, while scouting for the Quail Hollow CBC, we saw a
kestral near the intersection of SR. 44 & SR 619 (in Stark County) at about
12:45, then again at 3:45. It wasn't so many years ago that I would see as
many as a half dozen on SR 619 between SR 44 & Hartville. There was also
another kestral on SR 44 a little ways north of SR 224
And now an observation/question about crow roosts. Last year, we located a
very large (several thousand) winter roost in Coshocton, per the request of
John Ritzenthaler. This year the roost is in another location, still within
the general area of Coshocton but much harder to get close enough to, to
pinpoint the exact location. Does anyone know if crows change the roost location
every year? Do they have several locations in which they rotate between & if
so about how many might they use? Or does it take some type of disturbance
to make them move from 1 location to another? Do they even have several
locations they might use in 1 year?. We did find that it really wasn't too
difficult to locate the roosts, especially last year. We just parked on a hill
with a good view of the whole area & watched for the "stream" of crows, then
were able to follow them right to the roost area which was a line of trees along
the railroad. This year we ran into difficulties following the stream,
which was passing over us as we drove down SR 36. The problem being they crossed
the river & we couldn't. Nevertheless we were able to narrow it down to
somewhere along the river, behind the Stone Container Factory.
Bird On everyone!
Laura Dornan
Louisville, Stark County ( & sometimes Coshocton County)
______________________________________________________________________
Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society.
Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list.
You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS
Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]
|
