Hello Birders,

Sunday, May 15, was the last day of the Biggest Week In American Birding in northwest Ohio (area of Magee Marsh / Ottawa Nat’l Wildlife Refuge). With rain, cooler temperatures, and north winds, birders at Magee and Ottawa tallied “only” about 24 warbler species on Sunday, but had extraordinarily good views of many of them: as expected in these conditions, the warblers and other songbird migrants were foraging very low and very close to the boardwalk and trails.

These kinds of exceptional views reached absurd levels on Monday afternoon, May 16. With strong north winds, the wind chill was probably around 40. The few insects active were concentrated low on the lee side of the woods, and the migrants appeared to be very intent on feeding. At the Magee boardwalk, near the east end, warblers and vireos were foraging at eye level or below, sometimes perching on the railing or boardwalk itself. Chestnut-sided Warbler and Magnolia Warbler were particularly abundant, but there were also good numbers of Bay-breasted, Black-and-white, Tennessee, and other warblers, and double digit numbers of Philadelphia Vireos. Photography was almost ridiculously easy, with the main challenge being that the birds were often too close! I’ve written before that “In the month of May, more warbler photos are taken in northwest Ohio than in all the rest of the United States combined,” and no one who witnessed this afternoon on the boardwalk would be likely to doubt that.

Today's cold temperature and northeast winds had other effects as well. Swallows were foraging very low over the water, allowing very good views of all the Ohio breeding species at some of the local wetlands (such as along the canal just south of the Magee boardwalk, and the entrance pool at Ottawa NWR). Northeast winds have pushed water into the local estuaries, making for very high water in the areas where herons and egrets normally would be foraging, so Great Egrets were out in flooded fields all over the area.

Currently (10 pm on Monday) there's still a cold wind out of the north, so the songbird migrants concentrated near the lakeshore in n.w. Ohio are not likely to head north tonight. Numbers and variety should continue to be good at least through Tuesday.

Looking ahead, the forecast is for an unusually persistent pattern of northeasterly winds, cooler temperatures, and frequent showers for the next several days. Toward the latter part of the week (Thursday May 19 – Friday May 20), a couple of small high-pressure systems are supposed to move through just a little south of us, but it doesn’t look like they’ll do much to break the pattern of north winds. Birdwise, the current crop of migrants along the lakeshore should very gradually decline over the next few days, without a lot of significant new arrivals. Toward Thursday and Friday, a few new birds should trickle in to give us some turnover, and more on Saturday as the north winds become lighter and more erratic. But by that time there should be a large number of birds dammed up to the south of us. When the weather-dam breaks, we should get another big arrival of migrants.

Right now the forecast is that the wind will finally swing toward the south on Saturday night; depending on just when that happens, the next really big migration day could be Sunday May 22 or Monday May 23.

Short prediction: Good diversity but gradually declining numbers of migrants through 5/18; a few new arrivals 5/19 – 5/21; big push of migrants 5/22 and/or 5/23. As usual, I’ll be posting updates and refined predictions on the Black Swamp Bird Observatory’s birding pages at http://cranecreekbirding.blogspot.com/(also accessible through http://www.bsbo.org/Birding/ )


Kenn Kaufman
Editor, Kaufman Field Guides series
http://www.kaufmanfieldguides.com/
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