There was touching essay in the NY Times the other day, retrievable at
  	
        http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/02/opinion/silent-seashores.html?hp&action=cick&pgtype=Homepage&module=ccolumn-top-span-region®ion=ccolumn-top-span-region&WT.nav=ccolumn-top-span-region&_r=0
	
        The shrinking of shorebird numbers here in Ohio has been
steady or even drastic, and birders with histories of twenty years or 
fewer may not realize it. Nearly 50 species have been reliably reported 
in Ohio, 37 of them usually reported yearly---more than the vaunted 
warblers. We largely harbor shorebirds bound for their breeding ranges 
in remote areas of Canada, though six species--killdeer, spotted 
sandpiper, upland sandpiper, Wilson's snipe, American woodcock, and 
Wilson's phalarope--are known to breed here now, and piping plovers once 
bred in every Lakeside county and were seen inland with regularity as 
migrants. Some old reports suggest long-billed curlews nested in Ohio in 
days long ago.
        These declines in numbers have many causes. Only a few species are now 
legal to hunt in Ohio. South America now provides fewer safe wintering 
areas, where increasingly hunters "harvest" scary numbers of these birds 
in migration there and in Central America. Here, habitat is the problem.
        One thing Ohioans can do for these birds is to enlarge and protect the 
areas in which they can find food and shelter on migration or in nest 
sites. Too many areas we set aside for wildlife do not resemble 
prehistoric Ohio, and ignore the needs of shorebirds and other non-game 
species. Needless to deny, good stopover and nesting sites here are 
fewer than they once were.
        Doing something is not easy, but I offer an example. Here in the 
Columbus area, the Metro Parks system acquired hundreds of acres of corn 
and beans on the west side of Franklin County, and cleared them in 2011, 
ripping out over a hundred miles of drain tiles. Birders converged on 
this area later, where natural water regimes were allowed to prevail, 
and native plants sowed. The shorebirding was fabulous: nearly 
immediately ponds appeared, and damp meadows and hillocks began to 
emerge. Local observers converged on all the sprouting native vegetation 
and new landforms caused by unhampered drainage. Thirty-some shorebird 
species appeared that year--with reports of flocks of 2000 pectoral 
sandpipers, a thousand golden-plovers, 200 snipes, 170 killdeers, 101 
lesser yellowlegs--and 29 other species that hadn't been noticed in the 
area for a hundred years or more.
        Since that time, this area has matured, and--as planned--has come to 
resemble its primeval state. The shorebird habitats have shrunk,
but natural species typical of such areas--nesting rails, waterfowl, 
sparrows, raptors, etc.--have returned, and promise to remain. Smaller
stable refugia for long-distance shorebird migrants are seen alongside 
the cattail borders of water bodies. The brief period of extravagant 
numbers of migrant shorebirds are behind us, but this Ohio spot now 
plays a new part in providing natural habitat for them.
        Maybe we shouldn't concentrate on providing habitat only for migrant 
waterfowl---which of course have their own problems, but not so much as 
shorebirds in Ohio--but for other birds that once were always their 
companions. There was a day when shorebirds resorted to "sky-ponds," low 
spots out in agricultural fields where water and migrants gathered, but 
now the chemicals in those fields deter them. Recreational bodies of 
water should tolerate a few areas of "just mud,"
and duck ponds should have shallows and sloped muddy margins. Who knows, 
a couple of Lake Erie beaches could be made off-limits to human 
recreation, but on-limits for plovers. Wildlife areas could easily be 
designed to accommodate shorebirds on purpose, rather just as an 
accidental feature.
        I don't know if such measures will help much to decelerate the alarming 
losses of shorebirds, but surely they can do no harm.
Bill Whan
Columbus
	
	
	

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