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July 2012

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From:
Margaret Bowman <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Margaret Bowman <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 31 Jul 2012 14:49:30 -0400
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Directions: From Columbus, take Route 161, which becomes Route 37, which becomes Route 16 through Newark. About 8 or 10 miles east of Newark, turn onto Route 146 toward Zanesville. Watch for the Licking Co.-Muskingum Co. line sign. Very shortly after entering Muskingum Co., look for a road off to the right (beside and just east of the Hanby Farms complex). This is Pleasant Valley Road. You can either turn right onto Pleasant Valley and make an immediate left onto the road that enters the wildlife area, or continue a hundred feet or so past Pleasant Valley and turn right off of Route 146. Both access the same road into the wetlands area. Continue east about 150 yards and you’ll see that the road bears sharply right. After making this turn, begin watching on your right for the wetlands area. You can’t miss it; it’s within 3 feet of the roadway. In spring, it is filled with ducks. Now, it is nearly dry. 

From Zanesville, drive west on Route 146 until just past Nashport. Watch carefully to the left for Pleasant Valley Road. There is a brown sign indicating that the Dillon Sportsman’s area is down this road.

All of the shorebirds were to the west of the road, at the first "pool", which had only a little very shallow water. There are extensive mudflats, with very little vegetation. The mud was crawling with edible fauna. A quick count with binoculars tallied 112 shorebirds. A quick second count identified just 27 of these were killdeer. I saw no semipalmated plovers, avocets, stilt sandpipers or dowitchers, but there could have been. My more careful look first separated birds by eye ring/no eye ring, then by leg color. Leg color was very difficult to discern due to soft, messy mud. However, a good idea of leg color could be determined by looking at the upper leg. Size is difficult for me to determine, and today there were so few killdeer, I could not use those to gauge size. About 40% of the birds had large, easily seen eye-ring or "spectacles". Of the smallest birds, of which there were few, I was only able to identify least. I saw no birds that definitely had black legs. As I was working my way through the birds, a helicopter flew over, fairly low, and the birds took flight. They set down again quickly, but I didn't start through them a second time. Based on the sheer numbers, there could have been some rarities among the birds, but I’m not good enough to distinguish them. A lot of the birds remained unidentified.

There were also 6 juvenile little blue herons present. At first, I only saw 5, but when the helicopter flew over, a 6th appeared from behind a small island. There were two great egrets and several great blue herons in the area for size comparison.

There were also 4 immature bald eagles feeding on the dead and dying fish in the shallow, drying water. 

For a complete list of what I was able to identify, go to:
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S11244125

NOTE: In the past 4 days, I have visited Pipe Creek, the Crane Creek Estuary trail (Ottawa/Magee Marsh), Metzger Marsh, the Hoover boardwalk, Funk Bottoms. NOTHING compares to what I saw this morning at Dillon, in terms of ease of viewing, habitat, or sheer numbers. Some of the birds were within 10 feet of the road.

Margaret Bowman
Licking Co., OH

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