Greetings!

The Purple Gallinule was still present this morning at Columbia Reservation.

I arrived at 6:55 a.m. and the gates to the parking lot were still closed, so this may be something to watch for. The naturalist said something about arriving an hour early, so folks who come extra early might have difficulty finding somewhere to park. This might imply that the gates normally open at 8:00? He opened the gate at 7:00 a.m. when he arrived this morning.

I walked right out to the location and scanned the spatterdock for about 5 minutes and could not locate the bird. I walked to the water's edge to get a better look and still did not see anything. I was about to move to the impoundment on the opposite side when I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. The bird walked out of the willows and grasses and was about 5 feet away from me walking along the shoreline. It was so close that I think with a big step and a strech of it's neck that it could have nibbled my toes. It proceeded to walk right in front of me while I cautiously took a few photos with my cell phone...too afraid to do much more than that. It barely noticed me and kept right on working the shore down to the two logs in the corner and never made it out to the spatterdock in the middle of the impoundment...continuing to work the shore and the corner of the impoundment. Several folks arrived to take photos before I left and positioned
 themselves in various locals along the shore...only to have the bird approach within 5-10 feet of where they were sitting.

It seems (per conversation with the naturalist) that the bird likes to work the shore in the early morning hours and then when human activity gets to be a bit too much...it flies out into the spatterdock to forage.

Unless the storms today and tomorrow blow it out of town, it looks very content to stick around for quite some time.

Good luck for everyone that tries for it this weekend during the activities at Magee Marsh!

Good birding,

Jason

Jason S. Larson

Graduate Student

Ohio University

Department of Environmental and Plant Biology

315 Porter Hall

Athens, Oh  45701

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740-593-1126



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