A fitting description of every birders experiences at The Conneaut Sandspit was sent to me by Michigan birder Darlene Friedman on July 23rd, after my "Today's Conneaut Piping Plover" posting. Today, Wednesday July 30th, was one of those days that she described perfectly, and is how we felt upon our departure at 3:45PM. The following is her simple message to me:


(Bob, I've never been to Conneaut, but it sounds like a combination of Heaven and Hell!)


Up until about 2:30PM the day was wonderful, the way we like it. This part of the day was described in an earlier post. Additional birds that had arrived after the morning post were 2 Ruddy Turnstones, along with 2 Pectoral Sandpipers at 2PM, and then the highlight we had hoped for, at 2:42PM; Denise spotted 2 Whimbrels on the breakwall near the big yellow crossing dot. They stayed for less than thirty seconds in normal Whimbrel fashion before disappearing behind the wall, not to be seen again. And now for the Hell part of the story. While the shock of the Whimbrels hadn't wore off yet, way on the other side of the water we see two sixteenish looking boys throwing rocks at close range, at the avocets. The avocets flushed to the east edge of the sandspit, now ptotected by us and our vehicle. Then the five year old acting teenagers began chasing after the remaining shorebirds, making sure they flushed everyone of them. The final straw for the avocets was the parasails overhead and the sail boards zipping by. They made their final departure to the east at about 3:30PM. Hopefully they spend a restful night on Gull Point at Presque Isle State Park, in a protected environment. Some days you have to be really thick skinned to be a Conneaut birdwatcher.


Bob and Denise Lane                                       
______________________________________________________________________

Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society.
Please consider joining our Society, at www.ohiobirds.org/site/membership.php.
Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list.


You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at:
listserv.miamioh.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS
Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]