I had a rare free day in December today and dusted off the binoculars and had a look around.
I started off by looking in the quarry ponds close to home in Columbus. Although they had a bit more variety last week, there was still a good variety of waterfowl for the date in the the two I checked out. They would have made nice contributions to the Columbus CBC if the date wasn't moved. The pond on N side of 5th Ave. just west of the Scioto River bridge today held 48 Ring-necked Ducks and 3 Ruddy Ducks as well as the usual Mallards and Canada Geese. Pied-billed Grebes, Hooded Mergansers and Common Goldeneyes were also in that pond last week. The mergansers at least are still probably in the area in the Scioto. The larger quarry along Rt. 33 between 5th Ave. and Grandview today held 1 Mute Swan, 4 Gadwalls, 92 Ring-necked Ducks, 3 Redheads, 2 Canvasbacks, 12 Hooded Mergansers, 1 Pied-billed Grebe, 118 Am. Coots, and ~600 Ring-billed Gulls. Last week there were many more Pied-billed Grebes in the area and about a half-dozed Horned Grebes still remained, otherwise there wasn't much change in the waterfowl present. Yesterday while driving to various gigs I noticed large numbers of gulls (mostly Ring-billeds presumably) moving along both the Scioto and Olentangy Rivers in Columbus. I didn't see nearly those numbers today, but obviously there are still many gulls around. On the way to Deer Creek, the landfill along I-71 near Grove City hosted thousands of gulls, presumably mostly Ring-billeds. Does anyone know of a way to scan that area safely away from traffic? Considering the huge numbers of gulls that congregate there, the possibility of something interesting showing up there might be good (by central Ohio standards at least).
I have had more interesting days at Deer Creek than today. There was no sign of last year's pelican or shrike. The reservoir was pretty quiet (aside from gunshots). The presence of hunters kept the number of waterfowl low. Decoys vastly outnumbered living birds, but through my scope I could make out a few each of Mallard, N. Pintail, Bufflehead, Common Goldeneye, Ruddy Duck, and Horned Grebe in the reservoir away from the decoys. A flyover flock of ~100+ Red-breasted Mergansers flew over the reservoir while I was there but never touched down. Gulls present included ~100 Bonaparte's, ~300 Ring-billed, and a few Herring. The fields around the area held huge numbers of American Tree Sparrows. I didn't look very hard through the wildlife area, but I saw 6 flocks that easily contained 50 -100 apiece and no doubt more time would have yielded even more. Some of those flocks were joined by White-crowned Sparrows and/or juncos. I was hoping to find some finch flocks with a possible redpoll in the mix, but I didn't even see a goldfinch. I drove a little bit down some roads just west of the reservoir with corn stubble fields. I saw a few flocks of birds, but they were out of sight in the corn before I could get my binoculars on them. There very well may be some longspurs in the area, but I never saw anything for certain besides Horned Larks.
If anyone was wondering about the gull I posted a link to from my CA trip last month, I basically gave up on it as one of those gulls that you'll never know for certain what it is. That page got about 350 hits, but unlike that sandpiper a couple of years ago, I didn't get many responses. I think I got 4 that said Glaucous-winged, and 3 people telling me Thayer's. Jon Dunn himself had a look and didn't know what it was, so that's good enough for me too. Meanwhile I finished going through all my gull photos from that trip that can be accessed here :
http://www.roysephotos.com/whatsnew.html
I had to start a new page just for Glaucous-winged/Western hybrids since so many of those west coast gulls don't fit either species completely. Hopefully there will be some good gull watching in Ohio this winter, but those $75 non-stop plane tickets on Skybus from Columbus to California are a nice too!
Bob Royse
Robert Royse
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www.roysephotos.com
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