Hello Birders,

The estuary of Crane Creek on the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge is much
affected by winds, as various people have noted on this listserve before.
Today (Friday Oct. 22) the winds were out of the southwest all day, a
classic situation for pushing water out into Lake Erie and exposing good
mudflats, so I went out to the estuary late in the afternoon and was
rewarded with excellent numbers and variety of birds.

Several thousand birds were present.  Probably over one-third of them were
Ring-billed Gulls, but the other two-thirds included an excellent variety of
species.  I tallied 15 species of shorebirds, with highlights including 2
Marbled Godwits, 3 Hudsonian Godwits, 21 American Golden-Plovers, 70
Black-bellied Plovers, 9 Red Knots, one White-rumped Sandpiper, 14
Long-billed Dowitchers (and some very distant dowitcher sp. that may have
been Long-billed also), plus more than 800 Dunlins and more than 200
Sanderlings.  There were at least 1500 ducks on the estuary, with the
majority being Mallards, Gadwalls, Northern Pintails, and American Wigeon,
but with a lot more American Black Ducks than I saw here a couple of weeks
ago.  Some Great Egrets are lingering in the area, and hundreds of Rusty
Blackbirds were around, some of them coming out to walk on the mudflats near
the edges of the marsh.

Current forecasts say that the winds will continue out of the southwest or
south through Saturday, Oct. 23, so there should continue to be good
mudflats available for shorebirds.  I should note that a telescope is
essential for good viewing -- most of the birds are quite distant.  To get
to the best viewing area, take the entrance to Ottawa NWR from Route 2 and
drive straight north to the parking lot at the end of the road.  It's
labelled as "east parking for trails" on this map:
http://www.bsbo.org/birding/pdf/OttawaNWR-Trails.pdf
From the parking lot, walk north along the dike road.  It goes straight
north for about 3/4 mile (with great habitat for migrant sparrows, kinglets,
etc. on both sides of the road) and then angles northwest for about 1/4
mile.  At this point, the estuary is visible off to the right (north) side
of the road.  (This will all make more sense if you look at the map.)  If
the water in the estuary starts to rise, some of the shorebirds may move
over onto the mudflats in Pool 2B, which is just to the south (on the left
side of the road).

For those unfamiliar with the area, Ottawa NWR is in northwest Ohio, on
the Lucas Co. / Ottawa Co. border east of Toledo.

Kenn Kaufman
Oak Harbor, Ohio

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