I spent a long day in the southern 2 of my atlas blocks at Deer Creek today I arrived at dawn and stayed into dark in the evening to make a loop around to look for Common Nighthawks (none seen anywhere).  There were some highlights, but there were some negatives too. 

For me the crown jewel of the Deer Creek Wildlife Area was the big field near New Holland. I arrived there early this morning hoping to do as accurate of a count for all the Dickcissels and Grasshopper Sparrows as I could only to find that about half of it was MOWED! It was a dagger in my gut. The center of it was cleared with only the eastern and western sides remaining. This field had the largest concentration of singing Dickcissels I had ever seen anywhere and by far the largest concentration of Grasshopper Sparrows I've ever seen in Ohio away from the reclamation grasslands. While Dickcissels occur widely in scattered small numbers throughout the Deer Creek WA, this field had the only nesting Grasshopper Sparrows on the state property. I was told that it was cleared because a wetlands will be there. Let's hope the place offers many years of spectacular shorebirding to somehow justify it. Eventually the wetlands will extend all the way from Dick Rd. south to New Holland.  I walked around what's left of the field twice, both in the morning and evening. My rough estimate is that there still are 20-25 pairs of Dickcissels and 50+ pairs of Grasshopper Sparrows in the remaining side areas, probably half the number or less that were there last week. There are/were more Vesper Sparrows in the area than I previously thought. This evening I flushed several that weren't singing, including one carrying food when I walked through the remaining eastern part. This morning I tried to show a reliable Vesper to a visiting birder from WV without luck, but as we headed back another bird popped into view and started singing elsewhere on the western side. Other birds nesting in that field whose numbers were also likely halved include Song and Field Sparrows and Indigo Buntings.

The wetlands did offer some early fall birding today, but not much for the atlas. At one vantage point this evening I counted 118 Killdeers through my scope. Many more Killdeers were elsewhere in the area. Other shorebirds there today included 3 Least Sandpipers and one Spotted Sandpiper. There is some potential for good shorebirding in what will be the middle of three impoundments this fall. Also seen today were 5 Great Egrets and 4 Black-crowned Night-Herons, a couple of Green Herons, and many Great Blues. Blue-winged Teal, American Coots, and Pied-billed Grebes continue in the area, but I haven't seen any young with any of them to confirm nesting. At one corner of the wetlands that I previously hadn't checked carefully I flushed a Hooded Merganser out of some vegetation. Nesting for them there is possible I suppose, but if any ducklings were present they were hidden in the vegetation. A male Green-winged Teal seen today for the first time in the northern wetland tract was almost certainly a non-breeder.

Some of the best atlasing happened in the early afternoon when the sun was highest. I spent over an hour and a half trying to confirm the nesting status of a Bell's Vireo. The male of the pair is only singing sporadically at this point and moves away and stops singing whenever I tried to get near it. I also am not comfortable following the bird around because of possible disturbance to a nest or nestlings. After a long stake out  from a distance with my scope the female finally appeared carrying food. She then disappeared into some brush either to feed a nesting or a recently fledged chick and sat out in the open and preened for a while. I had only seen the male when singing for about a month now while the female was presumably on the nest. The other male hasn't been seen or heard in about two weeks now, but hopefully it's still in the area on inaccessible private property.

Both of the Blue Grosbeak males that I found last week were still singing at their same locations today. Also found at mid-day were two additional singing male Blue Grosbeaks in spots that I've been near in the past, but never close enough to find the grosbeaks. When atlasing it pays to take those extra steps to walk to the end of a hedgerow or isolated clump of trees in the distance. That makes a total of 4 male Blue Grosbeaks in the Deer Creek WA in three different blocks. All the birds are in Pickaway County, so new new county records for any of them. I've seen females with two of them, but presumably they're all paired up and nesting.

Both those blocks have small woodlots. In past weeks I've found a surprising variety while bushwhacking through them, but I wasn't able to confirm anything new in them today. One highlight, though, was seeing a coyote pup in one of them. I was very close to it while it sat motionless.

More signs of fall were noticed at dusk when huge blackbird flocks have begun to gather south of Pancoastburg. One flock had probably over 1000 birds in it, mostly grackles, but also Red-wingeds, B-h Cowbirds, and starlings in the mix.

Bob Royse

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