Greetings!  I hope you all had a nice May.  Migration is winding down and the Cicadas are firing up.  This is not a specific bird sighting, as usual, so you may delete if not interested in a narrative account.  

As expected, May was a productive month for our team (Kent Miller, Ben Morrison, and me) in Carroll County.  We added 37 new species to our tally as we crisscrossed the county attempting to locate migrants in what were certainly not ideal conditions.  Similar to last year, there were no days/nights of S-SW winds that were not accompanied by rain, which kept the migrants pretty dispersed.  There were days in which we noted definitive movement, but it required nearly constant monitoring of chosen spots across the county to locate new species.  

In terms of Warblers, it was a very good month.  We tallied 33 species.  The only species not seen that fall into the realm of realistically possible were Golden-winged, Kirtland’s, Worm-eating, and Connecticut.  Of course, there is still a chance for a late straggler and a semi-late Connecticut.  There has been no shortage of effort to find these species.  We thought going in that Worm-eating should not be that difficult, but we have found that Carroll seems to lie just north of their preferred territory.  The habitat on the east end of the county represents the western edge of the drainage to the Ohio river along the Flushing Escarpment and seems to represent the beginning of the steep gorges that these birds seem to prefer.  I am certain that Jefferson and Harrison Counties have an abundance of this habitat.  

Of note, Kent Miller had a very productive morning on 5/23 when he found a beautiful male Mourning Warbler near Fargo Rd. and a young male Prothonotary Warbler singing away in the eastern marsh area of Atwood Lake.  Prothonotary was a bird we were concerned that we may not locate due to a general lack of appropriate nesting habitat.  This is also why we are trying so hard to find a Marsh Wren, so far with no success.  There is decent marsh habitat along Briar Rd (east and west of Fargo Rd.), so we have not given up by any means.  

A few days before Kent’s great morning, Ben Morrison with help from Shari Jackson located an Olive-sided Flycatcher at Stillfork Swamp Nature Preserve.  Speaking of getting some help, we had some folks come down in May to help us with our survey.  Barb & Terry Sponsellor walked Stillfork with our team the day Kent found the beautiful Lawrence’s Warbler.  Dan Kramer joined Kent and I to show us a few areas we had not yet seen around Atwood and Leesville Lake on a morning that we added several new species for the year.  We also had help from Jerry Talkington and Irene Krise, who joined us at Stillfork NP and also at Fargo Rd. for a day of birding.  That day we had a very strong candidate for a Common Raven.  Thanks to all the folks who have helped us so far.  We hope to enlist them again as we survey nesting birds in the coming month.

We are working hard to locate Summer Tanager and Blue Grosbeak right now.  There is a lot of favorable habitat, which is both great and challenging at the same time.  Carroll County is almost all private property, so we are very limited on how we bird.  We primarily have to bird from our cars and get out to walk stretches of the road in order to look and listen more carefully.  The listening part is extremely challenging right now with the 17-year Cicada (Brood V) in full swing.  I saw a post in which a person measured the din at 103 decibels.  Those Kentucky Warblers calling from deep in the woods are well camouflaged by the cicada.  The upside of the cicada is that maybe we will pick up a Mississippi Kite in the next week or two!  

As I have asked before, if you have knowledge of noteworthy birds in Carroll, please let us know.  This is not about our personal lists (although that is a side benefit), this is about increasing the data being entered into eBird in the county so that we have a more accurate account of the birds of Carroll County.  I have had a lot of folks tell me that they have had Ruffed Grouse in the county over the years, but we have not had a positive report yet this year and the information we are getting from local residents and hunters is not good.  This species may be about gone for many reasons.  

Happy birding, and maybe I will run into a few of you at Optics Fling this weekend at Time & Optics as I help co-lead a few of the birding trips.

Jon Cefus
Carroll Co.  
______________________________________________________________________

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]