It appears that both pair of birds have now hatched young. After Dave's
called we traveled up to see the young birds only to find that the pair that
frequent the far east side of the flood field have one young walking around
with them. 8 Black-necked Stilts in Ohio in one day, who would have
guess???
All of the birds spend a lot of time sitting in the grass, weeds, sow beans
and so are sometimes hard to locate. One adult male, from the east side,
does a lot of flying around and feeding. He was observed first on the west
side in the area of the birds with three young and then flew back to the
east side. He did this several times this afternoon. It may take patience
to see these birds now. If they are actively feeding, it easy, but if they
are resting it is tough as the vegetation is getting taller. Also, the wet
areas seem to be drying up fairly fast. There were not as many migrant
shorebirds today. Hopefully the fields will stay wet enough for the main
movements of shorebirds to come. The flooded field in Sandusky County (CR
292) still has a good variety of shorebirds today.
For those of you in the area interested in grassland birds, the fields south
of the intersection of Twp. Rd. 80 and CR 46 (which is about 4 miles south
of the stilts) had Sedge Wren, Field Sparrow, Savannah Sparrow, Vesper
Sparrow, Henslow's Sparrow, Dickcissel, Bobolink, and Eastern Meadowlark
this afternoon.
Maps will show that you can drive straight down Twp. Rd. 80 to this site.
But they are wrong, part of the road is no longer passable. About two miles
south you will have to turn left, go to SR 18, turn right onto SR 18, go
about 1/2 mile and turn left back onto Twp. Road 80. Twp. Road 80 jogs
several times so it is a good idea to have your gazetteer or Seneca County
map handy. But if you get lost, let me know what birds you find and where
you think you saw them. ;>)
Tom Bartlett
Tiffin, Ohio
[log in to unmask]
______________________________________________________________________
Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society.
Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list.
Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/.
You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS
Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]
|
