Friday found Ben Morrison, Kent Miller and me bouncing around in Noble County once again as we were trying to pick up the difficult warblers that we missed in spring, and try again for a Northern Waterthrush, which has eluded us so far.  As a group, we had 19 species of Warblers (if I recall correctly), with Kent and Ben picking up a dandy first year Connecticut while yours truly was backing up his car in the only 2 minute interval we were not all together on this particular group of warblers at a bathing spot.  As Kent put it….”that’s how nemesis bird stories get started…”  2/3 of us got the bird, with no shortage of trying (within reason, as we tend to keep focused on the bigger picture).  Still….ugh.  The quest for a lifer COWA continues. We spent 8 hours and 15 minutes working the AEP reclaimed land in Noble that day, but it didn’t feel like that until the drive home!

Anyway, later in the day we were wrapping things up at Seneca Lake (the portion in Noble Co.) when we observed a tremendous stream of European Starlings and Red-winged Blackbirds come in to roost on the plants (I’m sorely deficient in my flora knowledge) covering the shallow east end of the lake.  As a few flocks took off and wheeled around in small murmurations, someone (Kent, I think?) noticed a white bird mixed in with the Starlings.  We followed it around a bit, and eventually it settled down in a place where we could see it better and I was able to snap a distant photograph (link below…I hope it works).  It appears to be a leucistic bird.

We did our best to do a conservative estimate of the birds that streamed in.  We settled on 50,000 Starlings (+/- a few thousand, obviously) and 4000 RWBBs, plus another 4000+ at a nearby spot at the north end of the lake.  While one may have differing views on the beauty of a European Starling, it was a breathtaking experience to see and, importantly, hear the whirring air as the groups came in and settled down.  It was truly a spectacle of nature to behold.  Noble has been good to us this year.


Jon Cefus
Cuyahoga Falls

http://s1296.photobucket.com/user/joncefus/media/Leucistic%20European%20Starling%201%20Seneca%20Lake%20-%20Noble%20Co.%209-25-15_zpsgaccusi2.jpg.html
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