As I collected first Ohio records for certain species, I noticed that a
lot of them seemed anomalous, since you'd think they would have been
recorded first in Lake Erie, rather than central Ohio.
        King eider 1880, common eider 1885, white-winged scoter 1876, black
scoter 1876, surf scoter 1917, Eurasian wigeon 1902, cinnamon teal 1895,
magnificent frigatebird 1880, long-tailed jaeger 1928, Sabine's gull
1926, Franklin's gull 1906, black-legged kittiwake 1925.
All of these species were confirmed first in *central Ohio*, all in
those years. I've taken most of these records from Peterjohn (2001).
        If I wanted to find these birds in Ohio, I'd take a trip to the Lake,
as they're too rarely seen in the middle of the state, and likelier up
north, no? One explanation might be that long ago, when optics were
primitive, firm ID conclusions could not easily be made of birds way out
amid winds and heaving water, and in the days when specimens of unique
species were desired, only birds in the placid waters of mid-state could
easily be collected or even carefully observed with inadequate optics,
or killed with a shotgun.
        One other factor might have been the scarcity of inland waters in Ohio
in the old days. We tend to forget that nearly all the inland lakes
resulted from human influences fairly recently; Ohio country included no
large bodies of deep water south of Lake Erie in the old days. One of
the first artificial lakes was Buckeye Lake, first dammed up around
1825, and it was at this reservoir that so many finds of the late 19th
century were collected.
        Why were all these species not collected in Lake Erie spots before
that? Lake Erie is a far more powerful body of water than Buckeye Lake,
and shooters lucky enough to hit a distant bird found that collecting
the specimen was even harder. Erie storms may have brought birds closer
to shore, but braving the waves to retrieve them was a lot harder than
doing so in a reservoir, which is why we have learned more about birds
in the old days by studies from collectors at comparatively tame
reservoirs than in the vast and threatening waters of Lake Erie.
        That's my explanation. Anybody else got a better one?
Bill Whan
Cols


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