East Harbor State Park 4/20

This is a belated post, but on Tuesday April 20 I took a brief look at East Harbor State Park. This park just east of Port Clinton is a gem, sometimes overlooked by birders but with a lot to offer. On Tuesday, songbird migrants were in low numbers (as they have been at other points along the lake this week), but trails near the Lockwood Picnic Shelter on the west side of the park produced Hermit Thrush, Palm Warbler, Winter Wren, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, and good numbers of White-throated Sparrows, as well as Brown Thrasher and Field Sparrow that have arrived for the summer. I didn't have time to check the woodland trails south of the east beach, but that's another good area for migrant songbirds at times.

East Harbor is excellent for waterbirds as well as land bird migrants. On the large lagoons in the center of the park, and off the beach on the east side of the park, there were hundreds of Ruddy Ducks, scores of Lesser Scaup, and a little group of four Greater Scaup. The north part of the east beach is often a good area for gulls, even early and late in the season when the mid-winter concentrations are not around; on 4/20 there was a single Lesser Black-backed Gull there along with good numbers of Bonaparte's, Ring-billed, and Herring gulls.