While hitting some marginal OBBA blocks this morning, I found a Bell's Vireo in Grove City, a southwest suburb of Columbus.  The good news is that it's on a piece of Columbus Parkland (Windward Farms, a field & pond along Holt Road), so it's easily accessable.  It's in classic habitat: a small shrubby fencerow along the back of the parkland, separating 2 large fields.  The bad news is that most of the surrounding area is being rapidly turned from cornfields into pathetically unimaginative subdivisions, and the most of the adjacent fields are up for sale for development.  In addition to the vireo, the parkland field also held singing & defensive Savannah and Grasshopper sparrows, and a very defensive pair of Spotted Sandpipers (the field is adjacent to the 'pond', a large drainage rockpit).  Also present were Brown Thrasher, Willow Flycatcher, and several Horned Larks singing and chasing over the nearby cornfields.  This field is within visual distance of Bolton AirField, whos
 e margins should probably also be checked for Bell's Vireos.

Later in the morning, I surveyed Fryar Park, a park in south Grove City that has a pocket woodland.  Aside from the usual chickadees, titmice, and flycatchers, the woodland also had a singing Worm-eating Warbler, one of the first that I've found near Columbus in June.  I survey this park regularly, and the bird wasn't there earlier in the month, so it was clearly a recent arrival.  It was hanging out in a vine-y thicket along the north end of the nature trail doing what WEWA like to do: picking at hanging clusters of dead leaves.

I also birded the area around Mt. Trashmore, Columbus' stupendous landfill (which is just south of Fryar Park). The surrounding farms had fair numbers of sparrows, including Savannah, Grasshopper, and even a single Vesper Sparrow.  It's a sad comment on how development and 'clean farming' have altered the habitat hereabouts that I was more excited about the Vesper Sparrow than I was about the Bell's Vireo.  The sparrow is probably rarer close to Columbus now.


Rob Thorn
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EarthLink Revolves Around You.

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