I got to spend Saturday and Sunday mornings birding in Northwest Ohio.  The lake, flooded fields and marshes are still frozen over, but there are a lot of birds around in the areas that are open.  On Saturday there were lots of redheads, ring-necked ducks, lesser scaup and a variety of other ducks at Metzger Marsh.  I took the wildlife drive around Ottawa refuge to view the mostly frozen marshes.  There was one impoundment that had a nice mix of waterfowl.  This was on the Vehler Road stretch near the end of wildlife drive.  There were decent numbers of swans around also.  At Magee Marsh the northern shrike was seen along the causeway.  East Harbor State Park also had a northern shrike.  This bird was in the area of the exit.  I didn't see much else at East Harbor or at Port Clinton or Castalia.
 
On Sunday I started out at Maumee Bay State Park area.  I had a northern shrike there.  It was in an open field on the other side of the house just west of the Mallard Club Wildlife Area parking area.  I didn't see much else in that area.  At Metzger marsh there were as many ducks as there were on Saturday.  I did notice some changeover.  There were a lot fewer scaup and quite a few more green-winged teal.  On Saturday I saw a total of about a dozen green-winged in all the areas I checked.  On Sunday I saw over 200 birds.  It seemed like there were more pintail on Sunday also.  I sat watching the groups of waterfowl at Metzger for about an hour and there was a constant flow of waterfowl in and out.
 
On Stange Road there was an male EURASIAN WIGEON amongst a group of 20+ green-winged teal, 2 blue-winged teal, and about a dozen mallards and 6 American wigeon.  I saw them there a little after 10:00.  When I stopped everything flew.  They were circling around so I moved away to let them land.  I returned around 11:30 and there were only 5 mallards and a green-winged teal present.  I searched the general area and found no concentrations of ducks where they might have headed to.  One thing I noticed also about this weekend was that I saw no large concentrations of geese or swans in any of the fields.  It seemed like there were a lot of fields that had 100 or so birds.  the largest swan concentration in the fields was on Route 163, a few miles west of Rte 590.  That field held about a hundred birds. 
 
Right now there is a lot of ice in the fields and as it melts there should be some good concentrations of waterfowl and there should be some nice wet areas.  It would be worth driving roads over the few days, especially with the rain that is predicted.
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