The spring Blue Jay movement does give a fantastic view of bird migration. This diurnal migrant can be truly spectacular. I conducted several 1 minute counts yesterday to try to make an estimate of the volume moving. For the period of 9 AM to 1 PM an estimate of 25,000 jays passed over the Navarre banding station along the Lake Erie shore in Ottawa County. The movement was much wider and lasted the entire day so the actual number was magnitudes greater.
Mark Shieldcastle
Research Director
Black Swamp Bird Observatory
Oak Harbor, Ohio
419-898-4070 (Ext. 202)
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-----Original Message-----
From: Ohio birds [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bill Heck
Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2016 10:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [Ohio-birds] Blue Jays at Magee
Just returned from a couple of days at Magee Marsh and surrounding areas; as others have reported, birding yesterday (Wednesday) was wonderful, with warblers galore; today (Thursday) was pretty decent by most standards, though slower than the previous day.
I do want to mention, though, one thing that I found truly amazing: the flight of Blue Jays. Yeah, I'm as happy to run up the list of species as anyone else, so seeing lots of different warblers, vireos, and other long-distance migrants is fun and exciting. But the continual flight of thousands upon thousands of Blue Jays overhead truly constituted a spectacle. I really have no idea how many Jays came into and over Magee, but even a few casual glances in the morning quickly had my personal total into many hundreds, and the birds just kept coming: twenty, thirty, fifty at a time, over and over again. After a hundred or two or three there would be a pause, then just when I thought that might be it, another flock -- and another and another -- would come along.
Sometimes it's those little, taken-for-granted happenings that, in their own way, are most impressive.
--
Bill Heck
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