Greetings---I spent the whole day in Ashtabula Co. Sightings ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime. Started off at Orwell Marsh. Notable there were: gadwalls, n. pintails, blue-winged teal, green-winged teal, wood ducks, horned grebe, greater yellowlegs, lesser yellowlegs, Wilson's snipe, tree swallows, barn swallow, and rusty blackbirds. Now for the odd stuff...a trumpeter swan was there; it had a green collar w/65M in yellow lettering. About 9:30 AM a group of 3 geese flew in, circled, and landed...imagine my surprise, as they were BAR-HEADED GEESE. They fed for 10 minutes or so, then flew off to the northeast. I suppose there's about zero chance these geese were "countable". But everything about them seemed "wild". No leg bands, wing tags, etc. I can't vouch for their parents, but these birds behaved like wild birds in every way. Go figure. Nearby in Orwell Twp. were a group of 20 wild turkeys (w/5 displaying toms) and a small flock of rusty blackbirds.
Another lesser yellowlegs was in a flooded field in Colebrook Twp. Then I meandered northeast to the Ashtabula Co. Airport; here I found more greater yellowlegs and snipe. En route I saw a couple each Am. kestrels and e. meadowlarks. On to Conneaut harbor...the "road" to the spit is now open. Here were: n. pintail, blue-winged & green-winged teal, 30 lesser scaup, hooded & red-breasted mergansers, pied-billed grebe, d-c cormorants, n. harrier, Am. coots, 175 Bonaparte's gulls, 18 great black-backed gulls, 4 Caspian terns, Forster's tern, belted kingfisher, a lone tree swallow, field sparrow, and 10+ song sparrows. Finally, I cruised down to Pymatuning. A few Bonies seen from the causeway, but little else on the Ohio side. An albino red-tailed hawk was on the PA side. Later, Craig
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