Yesterday I had probably the oddest experience of my birding career.
 
To back up a bit, a week ago Saturday I decided to take a journey
southwest of Cleveland to seek out good, relatively unbirded
farmland/field areas.  Unfortunately, suburban sprawl and dense
developments have replaced many of the fields hereabouts, but I did end
up birding along the bike trail at Lester Rails Path (off Lester Road,
southwest of Medina).  While there I repeatedly started up a brownish
bird with a remarkably pale tail.  I never got a great look at it, but I
had a glimpse of a partial facial pattern which strongly suggested
dickcissel.
 
Yesterday I decided to return to try to relocate the bird.  I did not
see the bird, but I did hear a song that could have been an alternate
dickcissel song; it could also have been a variant song sparrow
territorial song.  Several other good birds can be heard or seen along
the bike path, including wood thrush, willow flycatcher, indigo bunting,
red-eyed vireo, Northern flicker, and Baltimore oriole.
 
I was getting ready to leave and had decided to take one last stroll
along the stretch of the path where I had the possible-dickcissel last
week (the first fifty yards east of Lester Road) when I looked up and
saw something coming toward me.
 
Now, the path is about five feet wide, graveled, and runs straight and
level for at least half a mile at this point, so you can see things
coming from a long way away.  Even at over a quarter of a mile, however,
whatever it was simply didn't look right; the wrong height for a jogging
human, the wrong shape for someone on a bike.  I put up my binoculars
and found it was a long-legged bird that was running in my direction
straight down the middle of the path.  
 
I considered and discarded several possibilities such as Canada goose
pretty quickly.  As it came closer and details became apparent, I tried
but failed to turn it into a wild turkey.  I soon realized it had to be
a member of the ostrich family.  That's when it dawned on me that I was
in the path of a racing emu.
 
So I stepped a pace or two off the path and let it come on.  The bird
just kept chugging along, beak open, beating down the center of the
path.  Soon it passed right by me without sparing me so much as a
glance.  
 
It was surreal.  Obviously the bird was an escape from some farm nearby,
so its appearance was readily explained, but the bird's single-minded
absorption in running on the path lent the whole scene a bizarre
quality.  I could only stand there and watch as it passed me by.
Seriously, I half expected Elvis to show up on a dinosaur to tell me I
had won the Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes.
 
Anyway, the emu eventually headed up Lester Road, and I left soon
thereafter.  
 
Funny old world, isn't it?
 
Chris Spagnoli
Lakewood

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