There was touching essay in the NY Times the other day, retrievable at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/02/opinion/silent-seashores.html?hp&action=cick&pgtype=Homepage&module=ccolumn-top-span-regionĀ®ion=ccolumn-top-span-region&WT.nav=ccolumn-top-span-region&_r=0 The shrinking of shorebird numbers here in Ohio has been steady or even drastic, and birders with histories of twenty years or fewer may not realize it. Nearly 50 species have been reliably reported in Ohio, 37 of them usually reported yearly---more than the vaunted warblers. We largely harbor shorebirds bound for their breeding ranges in remote areas of Canada, though six species--killdeer, spotted sandpiper, upland sandpiper, Wilson's snipe, American woodcock, and Wilson's phalarope--are known to breed here now, and piping plovers once bred in every Lakeside county and were seen inland with regularity as migrants. Some old reports suggest long-billed curlews nested in Ohio in days long ago. These declines in numbers have many causes. Only a few species are now legal to hunt in Ohio. South America now provides fewer safe wintering areas, where increasingly hunters "harvest" scary numbers of these birds in migration there and in Central America. Here, habitat is the problem. One thing Ohioans can do for these birds is to enlarge and protect the areas in which they can find food and shelter on migration or in nest sites. Too many areas we set aside for wildlife do not resemble prehistoric Ohio, and ignore the needs of shorebirds and other non-game species. Needless to deny, good stopover and nesting sites here are fewer than they once were. Doing something is not easy, but I offer an example. Here in the Columbus area, the Metro Parks system acquired hundreds of acres of corn and beans on the west side of Franklin County, and cleared them in 2011, ripping out over a hundred miles of drain tiles. Birders converged on this area later, where natural water regimes were allowed to prevail, and native plants sowed. The shorebirding was fabulous: nearly immediately ponds appeared, and damp meadows and hillocks began to emerge. Local observers converged on all the sprouting native vegetation and new landforms caused by unhampered drainage. Thirty-some shorebird species appeared that year--with reports of flocks of 2000 pectoral sandpipers, a thousand golden-plovers, 200 snipes, 170 killdeers, 101 lesser yellowlegs--and 29 other species that hadn't been noticed in the area for a hundred years or more. Since that time, this area has matured, and--as planned--has come to resemble its primeval state. The shorebird habitats have shrunk, but natural species typical of such areas--nesting rails, waterfowl, sparrows, raptors, etc.--have returned, and promise to remain. Smaller stable refugia for long-distance shorebird migrants are seen alongside the cattail borders of water bodies. The brief period of extravagant numbers of migrant shorebirds are behind us, but this Ohio spot now plays a new part in providing natural habitat for them. Maybe we shouldn't concentrate on providing habitat only for migrant waterfowl---which of course have their own problems, but not so much as shorebirds in Ohio--but for other birds that once were always their companions. There was a day when shorebirds resorted to "sky-ponds," low spots out in agricultural fields where water and migrants gathered, but now the chemicals in those fields deter them. Recreational bodies of water should tolerate a few areas of "just mud," and duck ponds should have shallows and sloped muddy margins. Who knows, a couple of Lake Erie beaches could be made off-limits to human recreation, but on-limits for plovers. Wildlife areas could easily be designed to accommodate shorebirds on purpose, rather just as an accidental feature. I don't know if such measures will help much to decelerate the alarming losses of shorebirds, but surely they can do no harm. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ 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]