John Habig and I and his son, John, arrived at Avon Lake between 9:00
and 9:15 am Saturday morning, 12/20/08.  There was a Peregrine Falcon on
the top rail of one of the stacks at the power plant.  At that time the
flocks of gulls were not very close to the fishing pier.  Between 9:30
and 10:00 am, the Pomarine Jaeger appeared chasing the gulls off the
water into enormous swirling flocks.  While we were there, the Pomarine
Jaeger made at least two passes very close to the fishing pier, at least
once right over-head, and also landed on the water quite close for great
spotting scope views.  I tried a lot of photographs but the light was
very poor.  It was cloudy, dim and snowing lightly with very fine
flakes.  The western most parking area at Miller Park was quite
dangerous and covered with ice, so extreme caution was required.  We
headed east toward E 72nd Street and encountered three accidents on
I90/Rt 2.  It was treacherous driving with glassy sections especially on
the bridges, but some people apparently needed to go fast!  On the way
east, we stopped at Lakeland Cemetery and slowly drove through looking
for winter finches, but found none.  There are fruiting trees in the
cemetery but without any feeding flocks of Robins or waxwings while we
were there.  In Avon Lake, there were several locations near the power
plant with heavily laden fruit trees with flocks of feeding American
Robins.  The closer we got to downtown Cleveland and E 72nd Street, the
weather got better with less snow and small patches of blue sky showing
occasionally.  We tried for the Snowy Owl at Burke Airport on the way to
E 72nd Street, but did not find a Snowy Owl.  We spent several hours
scanning the large number of gulls at E. 72nd Street.  We found Iceland
Gull, Glaucous Gull, both 1rst year birds, one Lesser Black -backed
Gull, winter plumage adult, as well as the usual suspects, Ring-billed,
Herring, Great Black-backed, and Bonaparte's Gulls.  We looked hard for
other rare gulls, particularly through the large flock of Bonaparte's
Gull sitting on the water, but had no success.  We also found the
reported Long-tailed Ducks at Gordon Park at the marina, but we saw only
two of the three previously reported Saturday while we were there.  In
the pines near the Ranger Station east of the marina, we found the
previously reported Northern Saw-whet Owl.  We tried again at Burke
Airport for Snowy Owl, but did find either the adult or the immature
Snowy Owl previously reported.  We searched hard at Gate 9 and further
east to Gate 13.  At 3:30 pm, we headed south, not wanting to risk the
bad weather predicted for later Saturday.  We arrived safely in
Cincinnati with no snow or ice on the road on the way south, but with a
few wet snow flacks just starting to fall in Cincinnati.

Jay

 

Jay G. Lehman

Cincinnati, OH

[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]