Not to wear out my welcome, I combine two posts here. First, Brad Sparks
just called to announce finding a Ross's goose at Pickerington Ponds
Metro Park near Columbus a few minutes ago. It was in the big goose
flock that at the time was on the east side of Bowen Rd near the
observation deck location. Also:

"I saw a bluebird at Silvercreek Park in Medina County on Monday.  Is
this a bit early?"

        Thoughtful questions like this begin to pile up at this time of year,
when hopes of spring, and migration, affect us all. There is little
migrational movement underway in Ohio yet. Bluebirds are in Ohio
year-long. So are turkey vultures, meadowlarks, robins, flickers, coots,
black-crowned night-herons, pied-billed grebes, many waterfowl spp,
and lots of other birds. True, the farther north you look in Ohio the
fewer of these birds you usually see, but they are probably not moving
north yet.
        Of course, some familiar birds are rare and worthy of note in February
in Ohio. Examples are green-winged teal, horned grebe, cormorant,
killdeer, Wilson's snipe, Am woodcock, sapsucker, phoebe, hermit thrush,
Am pipit, or savannah sparrow. Common in migration here,  they too are
very unlikely to be moving north locally yet.
        Even more noteworthy are birds with few records in February. The
Virginia rail reports of recent days belong in this category; these
reports are especially significant, because they are of more than just a
stray, but apparently one or more individuals able to survive a tough
winter here, something that may tell us about the limits of this
species' abilities, and/or about climate change as it affects Ohio.
Again, surely not migrating.
        Birding is more rewarding personally once one learns how to evaluate
how unusual a given sighting is. Also, our collective knowledge advances
when accurate reports are made of unusual occurrences. If you learn
without a teacher, it will take many years to get a grasp of how
unusual--if at all--a given sighting is. There are good shortcuts to
this kind of hard-won experience. No serious Ohio birder should be
without Peterjohn's "The Birds of Ohio," and for this purpose even more
convenient is the Ohio Bird Records Committee's "Checklist of the Birds
of Ohio": the 2004 edition is on-line at
http://www.ohiobirds.org/publications/OBRClist.pdf
and the expanded 2008 edition is in print. With these resources, you can
assess at a glance if a record is early or late.
Bill Whan
Columbus

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