Turkey vultures and blackbirds can be false signs of spring. Snipes and
rails can winter in Ohio, too, and there are even records of woodcocks
doing so.
        Larry Rosche told me the other day that every winter of his birding
career about half a million wintering blackbirds have been roosting in
Barberton; there are some big winter roosts in western Lake Erie
marshes, too. My folks used to host at least a hundred wintering TVs in
their Ohio back yard every year. Bluebirds winter widely. No, the true
first arrivals have to be birds only freakishly seen in the winter,
regular species you can count on as infallible first arrivals of spring.
I'd be interested in what species readers think really qualify as
newsworthy in this way.
        Good candidates are pectoral sandpipers, chimney swifts, and Louisiana
waterthrushes. Sure, tree swallows and purple martins can blunder in on
a wing and a prayer, but pectorals and swifts have come all the way from
South America, on a very deliberate itinerary and spring arrival time.
Unlike a vulture loafing up from the next county south, their flocks
can't risk everything on finding warm weather out of season. And the
waterthrushes's voice in a chilly damp glen is all the more welcome for
being the earliest promise kept among songbirds.
Bill Whan
Columbus


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