With a snowy but free morning, I drove and hiked along stretches of Alum Creek bear Westerville (a NE Columbus suburb) hoping to hunt down the source of a rash of adult Bald eagle sightings along the creek in the last 4 weeks.  The old eagle nest at County Line Rd is a little worse-for-wear, and had no birds around it, as several other birders had commented earlier.  I looked through treelines north of there up to Acorn Nurseries (north of Polaris Rd) and south of there all the way down to I-270.  I also hiked and drove around Sharon Woods MetroPark, which is on the western edge of this corridor.  Net result: no eagles or large bulky nests anywhere along this stretch.  Admittedly, the weather today was not always ideal for good viewing, but the treelines were visible for most of the morning.  Only the deeper recesses of Sharon Woods were not visible (and I think the park staff would probably know if they had nest-building eagles anyway).  This leaves the possiblity that these birds are (1) up at Alum Lake and just commuting very far south, (2) in some isolated woodlot far outside of the creek floodplain (like the Westerville Reservoir), (3) commuting over from nearby Hoover Reservoir (although the volume of sightings between the 2 areas seems low), or (4) hiding under our noses in one of the urban parks along Alum Creek inside the I-270 ring. I'd love to think that this last one is realistic, but only time and effort will tell. 

Aside from missing the eagles, the morning was interesting for several other sightings:

Woodpeckers:  Sharon Woods had a Pileated hanging around one of the feeders along the Thomas Trail, while a sapsucker was along Alum Creek in Heritage Park (north of Main St. in westerville)

Hermit Thrush: 1 was eating berries along the Spring Creek trail in Sharon Woods.  It was proving more hardy than the Robins, which were largely absent from the snowy landscape this morning.

Pine Siskin: one continues to hang out in the alders around the edge of Shrock lake in Sharon Woods

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