Just a brief note to say that today, Friday May 6, is producing another very good push of migrants in n.w. Ohio (Magee Marsh / Ottawa NWR area). A very early report from Mark Shieldcastle at the main BSBO research site indicated that they already had 19 species of warblers; as with last Sunday, numbers were dominated by early-season species such as Nashville, Black-throated Green, Palm, and Yellow-rumped. Guides from Tropical Birding (Sam Woods, Christian Boix, Ethan Kistler, and others) were reporting excellent diversity from the Magee Marsh boardwalk, including Canada, Golden-winged, Cerulean, Yellow-throated, Pine, Cape May, Blackburnian, Blue-winged, Prothonotary, and Black-throated Blue warblers, plus Blue Grosbeak, Black-billed Cuckoo, Lincoln's Sparrow, and others. Brian Zwiebel reports good numbers in the woodlot at Metzger Marsh, including a Yellow-breasted Chat.

As a reminder, I post regular predictions as to migration in the Magee area through the Black Swamp Bird Observatory "birding pages" at http://www.bsbo.org/Birding/ -- also reachable directly at http://cranecreekbirding.blogspot.com/ . The predictions are based on poring over weather maps and talking with BSBO research staff, especially Mark Shieldcastle, with his wealth of experience in migration study in this area. Back on Tuesday we had predicted that today would be a good day, and my summary in yesterday's post was that there would be a good arrival today and tomorrow, and possibly a really major one on May 10 or 11. I don't always manage to post predictions here on Ohio-Birds: not everyone in the state is interested in this area, and I often just run out of time. But if you're interested, or considering a trip up this way, it's worthwhile to check those predictions. You can also get up-to-the-minute reports via Twitter from the Biggest Week in American Birding, either by subscribing to the Twitter feed or my going to this page: http://www.biggestweekinamericanbirding.com/sightings_update.htm

At any rate, today is a superb day in the Magee area, and so far the weather forecast suggests that tomorrow will be good as well.
Kenn Kaufman
Editor, Kaufman Field Guides series
http://www.kaufmanfieldguides.com/
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