This Thanksgiving found me birding along the urban stretches of the Scioto & Olentangy Rivers here in Columbus.  I worked around Berliner, Scioto, Confluence Parks, and the Long St. and King Ave dams, with a brief run up to the OSU footbirdge (to look for night herons).  The morning was clear and beautiful, but cold enough to freeze most of the still water, so areas above the dams were largely frozen.  This forced most of the water birds into the areas below the dams.  Highlights included:

Herons - small clusters of Great Blue Herons were below both the Greenlawn and Long St. dams, while 2 Black-cr. Night Herons were present at the stadium footbridge site at OSU.

Ducks - plenty of Mallards below both dams, but I also had fair flocks of Hooded Mergansers, with 25 on the Scioto in Berliner Park (below the Greenlawn dam) and another 15 below the Long St. dam.  Berliner also had 8 Black Ducks and a Ring-necked Duck.

Grebes - Pied-bills are starting to accumulate here, with 3 in the river at Berliner and 2 below Long St. dam.

Gulls - a flock of 200 Ring-bills & a few Herring were loafing on an extensive ice shelf above the Greenlawn dam

Raptors - both Coopers and Red-tailed Hawks were around the forests in Berliner and below Long St. dam

Landbirds - nothing terribly unusual, but there were 2 Hermit Thrushes and 4 Brown Creepers along the bikepath in Berliner (which runs along the riparian woods along the Scioto.  Most areas had surprisingly strong crops of honeysuckle berries, with small flocks of Robins, Waxwings, and White-throated Sparrows.

The most startling sights of the morning weren't avian, however; they were human.  At many spots along these rivers, usually where there was some forest cover, there were extensive encampments of homeless people.  This was not the odd scraggly guys in sleeping bags that I've often met in these areas in prior years.  These were large encampments with several new tents, tended fires, and bikes locked to trees.  I got to talking with a few of them, and they were just good people that were knocked out of their housing or jobs with the souring economy.  If you ever need a tangible reminder of how an economy has a more human face than stock averages, a hike along any of these urban rivers will now open your eyes.  We all have much to be thankful for this holiday, but quite a bit remains to be done.

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