Some buddies and I stopped by Haul Road yesterday (this is the
north-south industrial road through an old quarry, crossing Frank Rd
(Rte 104) just east of the exit from I-71.
        There is an osprey platform there just on the right after you leave the
freeway onto Frank Rd, where the birds nested last year. This year,
however, they have spurned our help and chosen the top of a utility-line
pole close to where Haul Rd meets Frank Rd downhill, and are building a
nest from scratch.
        The old eagle nest, too, has been abandoned, and is now occupied by a
family of great horned owls. Their nest is easy to see now with the
leaves off, and is across the quarry pool, a bit north of the new osprey
nest.  Not a lot farther on is a new active eagle nest at about the same
height but farther north. We also repeatedly saw red-tailed hawks
sailing over the area.
        On the other side of Frank, Haul Rd. heads down to the new City vehicle
impound lot, which replaces the old one on a site not far north, now
occupied by the new Audubon Center on Whittier Street, where there is
another active citified osprey nest. Haul Road is in many ways a city
boneyard, scarred by two centuries of exploitation for sewage ponds,
dumps, and excavations along the Scioto River, but there are some
patches of habitat between the cyclopean mounds of construction debris
where even something like a harrier might even show up to swell the
raptorial list. It's interesting to speculate why raptors should be the
first birds to reclaim areas we've despoiled. Maybe it's the rats.
        In the past, overzealous corporate security people have chased off
birders who pulled over on the wide margins of Haul Road to check out
the quarry, but they have backed off recently, perhaps having discovered
the difference between spotting scopes and shoulder-launched RPGs. If
you feel intimidated, there is a small park with a roofed picnic area
where you can sit and watch all the nests (scope advised), however.
Squeezed between the freeway and this flooded quarry flows the old
Scioto River, rerouted straight as a rule. If you care to, you can
summon up views from space on your computer of what our species has done
to this major river, quarrying limestone and dumping garbage and sewage
and debris for two hundred years, but you have to visit in person to see
the inroads now being made by the original inhabitants.
        In other quarry news, the island in the vast quarry next to the Shrum
Mound on McKinley St is being filled with nests of great blue herons and
d-c cormorants; the great egrets should be arriving in short order. To
see them, you have to climb up the mound, a relic of more benign human
efforts two thousand years ago.
Good birding to all,
Bill Whan
Columbus



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