Today (Feb 23) I drove from Wooster and birded the only open water on the
Cleveland lakefront - Avon power plant (Avon Lake) and Eastlake power
plant. It was a beautiful sunny day with only light wind, but it was VERY
COLD (0-5F).

I was at Avon from 11:15am-12:15 before my fingers gave out (not to mention
that the optical gear was not working all that well either). There is quite
a bit of open water there stretching from the fishing pier over to the
power plant. There were several thousand birds there, mostly mergansers.
When I arrived, there were 4-5 other birders there who told me I was 30
minutes too late for the long-tailed duck, as one of the greater
black-backed gulled had killed it in a fight over a fish and was eating it.
When I got out to the end of the pier, I saw the gull eating a duck it had
dragged out on the ice and I did see that it was the long-tailed. I
wondered about counting a dead long-tailed on my annual list, since I
needed one, but fortunately two more long-tailed males came soaring in
right in front of me about noon. The mass of ducks off the fishing pier was
quite impressive and nearly all the red-breasted mergs had their crown
feathers covered in frost/snow. Quite a sight. There were very good, close
views of the white-winged scoters, but I did not see any other species of
scoters, nor any loons. The biggest problem was all the fog that was
condensing in the frigid air, making visibility very poor at times as it
swirled around. That made any species counts very approximate. Conservative
totals for Avon were:
Canada goose 8-10
Mallard 25-30
Redhead 4-5
Canvasback 20-25
Greater scaup 5-10
Com. goldeneye 25-30
Bufflehead 1
Long-tailed duck males 3 (one dead)
White-winged scoter 6-8
Com. merganser 100+
Red-breasted merganser 1000+
Bald eagle 1
Ring-billed gull 4-5 (surely more)
Herring gull 20-25
Greater black-backed gull 50+

I birded Eastlake from 1:30-2:30pm. The fog was even worse there and there
seemed to be fewer birds. There were pretty good groups over towards the
edge of the ice, but with the fog it was nearly impossible to see them or
get any reasonable counts. Species there included: mallard, canvasback,
both scaup species, Com. goldeneye, Bufflehead, White-winged scoter (6-8
for sure, some pretty close), both mergansers, bald eagle (1), Herring gull
(40+), Greater black-backed gull (50+). At both places, greater
black-backed were by far the most numerous gulls.

Randy Rowe, Wooster

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