I was in Northwest Ohio yesterday (11/27) and had a couple hours to bird the
Ottawa Refuge area.  Generally it was pretty slow on the back roads in the
area.  The only things of note were large groups of tundra swans.  I was
surprised with the amount of roads I checked, I saw only 3 American
kestrels.  Twenty-five years ago the same drive would have yielded 20-30
birds.  Maybe it was just a bad day.

I walked the dikes at Ottawa Refuge and the best birds were all at the Crane
Creek estuary at the north end of the trails.  There was an immature SNOWY
OWL that was sitting on a fallen dead tree in the back end of the estuary.
At least half of the estuary was mudflat and the were a few shorebirds
present.  There were 6 killdeer, 2 lesser yellowlegs, 30+ dunlin and 1
long-billed dowitcher.  there were also a couple hundred swans on the flats
also.  On my walk back to the parking lot I spotted a single tree swallow.
It was flying over the mostly frozen marshes.

On my drive home I stopped briefly at Huron and Lorain.  Neither area had
many Bonaparte's gulls.  Both areas had quite a few ring-billed and lesser
numbers of herring gulls.  The only birds of note were 2 lesser black-backed
gulls at Huron and 1 at Lorain.  All were adults.

John Pogacnik
4765 Lockwood Road
Perry, OH 44081
(440) 259-2751

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