On a trip for Ohio River tomatoes and local corn, I managed to
side-track us for a look around the Cook's Creek Golf Course in Pickaway
Co, where great egret nests were found in 1995 (G. Garver, "First inland
Nesting Attempt by the Great Egret" Ohio Cardinal 21(1):31-33). All the
folks at the mostly-deserted course--it was 94 degrees--were especially
welcoming and well-informed, and were nice enough to lend us a golf cart
to drive down to where the Little Walnut joins the Scioto River, scene
of the famous nesting pairs. They told us an eagle pair now reigned over
the island on which the egrets had nested, and while they saw lots of
egrets (migrants no doubt) in May and August-Sept, no on had seen them
this summer, nests or not.
We ran into an EPA employee censusing fish in the Scioto, and he hadn't
seen any either. Nice spot, though, with lots of summer tanagers.
        On the way home we drove off 23 by way of the Pickaway Co Airport to
Radcliffe Rd (scene of the black rails of not so long ago). For a mile
and a quarter along that route (wherever at least one side of the road
was CRP land instead of crops) the power lines (mostly the lower one)
were jammed with bank swallows. Laura, awed but always in possession of
her numerical instincts, estimated their numbers at ten thousand. Their
spacing, if you filled in the empty spaces with birds from the upper
wire, averaged about nine inches, so I worked it out as 8,800 birds.
Either way, it was a mighty throng. These are usually the first swallows
to gather in big pre-migratory roosts, and my guess is all the quarries
etc. along this stretch provide a lot of sites for nesting colonies of
this burrowing species.
Bill Whan
Columbus

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