A week ago today, Tuesday, Jim Dolan (outdoorsman, kayaker, photographer, and birder) passed away due to complications at The Veteran's Administration Hospital in Cleveland. For the past couple of years, Jim has been battling Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a rapidly progressive fatal neurological disease that attacks the nerve cells), from his long time home in the town of East Palestine at the headwaters of Little Beaver Creek. To anyone that new Jim, a somewhat reclusive bachelor who spent all his time in outdoors, always one with nature, mostly close to home, a guy born into the wrong era. Jim's claim to fame in the Ohio birding world was the confirmation of Ohio's first known nesting of Common Mergansers. While kayaking his favorite area of exploration, The North Fork of Little Beaver Creek, he found and photographed a Common Merganser family as far back as 2001. Later, he was instrumental in placing Common Merganser nesting boxes along the tributaries of Little Beaver Creek. During the second Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas, Jim was the Region 53 Coordinator, which included most of Columbiana, and some of Mahoning, Carroll, and Jefferson Counties. Even during his final days, being confined to a wheel chair, he would try to get out to his neighborhood park down the street to photograph insects, his new vocation. No services were planned, so Jim can just drift away, unnoticed,  just the way he would want it to be! Goodbye to our friend of many adventures.


Bob and Denise Lane / Mahoning County

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