I was in Northwest Ohio this weekend and had a little time to get out and do
a little birding.  Although I turned up a a couple decent birds, in general
it was slow.  There are not a lot of waterfowl around yet although today
seemed to be appreciably better then Saturday with more geese around.  I saw
only a small number of snow buntings and only a couple longspurs despite
doing a fair amount of looking.

On Saturday I started in the Magee Marsh area.  I did find a northern shrike
at the end of the causeway there.  When I got back to the beach area I was
kind of surprised to see a huge number of fishermen out on the ice.  I
remarked to my son that these guys were idiots as the wind was gusting to
about 30 mph out of the south.  I told him that I bet later on that day the
Coast Guard would be there rescuing them.  That was about 9:45, by 10:15 the
Coast Guard was heading out to rescue the idiots.  I saw this often when I
worked out at Crane Creek.  If the fish are biting, they will be out there.
If the wind is strong out of the south they will be out there and they will
need rescuing. I guess things don't change.  Needless to say when we saw all
of them out there and the strong south winds, we cleared out of there so we
did miss all the excitement  (FYI,  they were out there on the ice again
today.  Draw your own conclusions).  From there we headed to Castalia.
Along Route 6 just north of where Rte 269 turns toward Castalia, there was a
blackbird flock of about 200 birds.  Amongst the many red-wings and
cowbirds, there was a single male YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD.  At Castalia,
there was nice a nice mix of waterfowl, nothing unusual.  Despite searching
quite a few back roads we saw little else other than a turkey vulture just
west of Port Clinton.

On Sunday I went and hiked back at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge.  There
were a few geese moving around, but little else.  On the back roads I did
run into a couple small flocks of snow buntings and a couple Lapland
longspurs.  On the way home I did run into a large flock of Canada geese
about three mile west of Sheldon's Marsh.  Amongst them were 6 WHITE-FRONTED
GEESE and two snow geese.


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

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