I had a chance to fly over the eastern end of the lake from Cleveland to Conneaut and it was very interesting.  Much of the shoreline is ice-covered with ice starting around Eastlake and continuing to Conneaut and beyond.  A good place to see the current ice extent on the lake is at:
 
http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/modis/modis.cgi/modis?region=e&page=1
 
West of Fairport we saw lots of ducks, gulls, and loons.   Once you got east of there, we still saw ducks and gulls, but here they were along open leads in ice and north of the ice.  There were occasional loons, but they were north of the ice.  Even towards Cleveland the loons seemed to be out at least 4-5 miles.  I think we saw over 100 loons on the lake.  We did not see many grebes.  They are small and difficult to see, especially with all the small pieces of ice floating around.
 
The vast majority of waterfowl were red-breasted mergansers (90-95%) with only a few bufflehead, goldeneye, and scaup mixed in.  Red-breasted mergansers were found just about everywhere.   It seems like there is a lot more duck variety along the shoreline and you just briefly hit those areas when starting and ending transects.   The shoreline is easily covered from shore and these surveys are meant for covering  more offshore areas.   Large gulls were common everywhere with a lot sitting along the edges of the ice flows.  We saw one glaucous gull and numerous great black-backed gulls.  There could have been more white-winged gulls, but a lot of the gulls did not fly when we passed and there were some nice sized flocks on the lake.  If we would get a good gale wind, I could see some good gulling occurring.
 
If you want some interesting reading, the paper on the first part of the aerial surveys is out.  Keith Lott did a great job on this and should be complimented as should all that helped with it.  There is a lot of information on the various species seen during these surveys.  I think these surveys are showing how important Lake Erie is as a staging area for many species of waterbirds.  The paper is titled: 
 
 “Mapping Pelagic Bird Distribution and Abundance as a Decision-Making Tool for Offshore Wind Turbine Development and Conservation Planning”
 
To see a copy of the paper, follow the link below.
http://www.fws.gov/midwest/wind/  (check the "News" box on the right-hand side)
 
John Pogacnik                                     
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