Ottawa NWR auto tour: update

Tuesday, September 13: This morning I had a chance to cover the auto tour route at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge with the Manager, Jason Lewis, and several members of his staff. As many birders are aware, the auto tour will be open for three days this weekend – Friday September 16 through Sunday September 18, from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day. In addition to his other areas of expertise, Jason Lewis is a keen birder, and he decided to have the three-day auto tour as a special concession to the Midwest Birding Symposium happening this weekend.

Jason and his staff also have been working to have some areas of prime shorebird habitat close to the auto tour route. These efforts suffered a setback last Thursday night, when an exceptionally heavy rain dumped three to five inches on this area. In addition to flooding my basement, this flooded the impoundment known as MS 5, which had had more than a dozen shorebird species immediately before that. With the abruptly higher water level, most of those birds dispersed. The Refuge staff have been pumping water out of MS 5 and the level is coming down again. We saw a fair number of birds there today, and Jason was optimistic that water levels would be much better for shorebirds again by this weekend.

Here are some notes on the auto tour route. For reference to the sites mentioned, see our map at
http://www.bsbo.org/Birding/pdf/OttawaNWRMap-AutoTour.pdf
The account below will be a lot easier to follow if you look at the map.

1. General: Before or after driving the auto tour, you may want to walk the trails through the woods behind the Visitors’ Center or the woodlot near the start of the auto tour, looking for migrant songbirds. However, you also may see such migrants anywhere on the refuge, so don’t just focus on the water birds. This morning, for example, we saw Tennessee Warbler and other species in trees along the road, and many swallows over the impoundments. Also, watch for Bald Eagles everywhere over the refuge, and keep an eye out for the Peregrine Falcon that has been hunting the area.

2. First part of tour route (see map): runs straight west for two miles past areas called MS 8b, North Woods, Butternut, and MS 7. We didn’t spend much time here today. But toward the west end of this, where you have Stange Prairie on the left and MS 7 on the right, this area can be good for migrant sparrows, especially just a little later in the fall. Might be worth stopping to scan for birds in the roadside brush.

3. At the southwest end of MS 7, the road turns right and runs north for almost a mile, crossing Crane Creek. Don’t stop on the bridge itself, but if you can find a spot to pull off before or after the bridge, the area just north of the bridge on the east side can be good for shorebirds and others. Today it had Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs and Snowy Egret, among other birds.

4. A little past the bridge over Crane Creek, the road runs into a T-intersection and the auto tour route turns to the right (east). The area just southwest of this corner, MS 6, holds some good mudflats, and has had good numbers of shorebirds in recent days, although not much was there today. If you look straight ahead (north) at the T-intersection you’re looking at MS 3, a good place to see Common Gallinules (Common Moorhen) and various ducks.

5. Continuing east on the auto tour, in a little over half a mile the main gravel causeway turns north (left) between MS 4 and MS 5. However, as of today Jason Lewis and his staff were discussing having the auto tour loop east all the way around MS 5. That will require a little more maintenance work on the road (they already have graders out working on other parts of the road in preparation for MBS), but it would open up more birding possibilities: MS 5 holds a LOT of birds, and it will have more if they can get the water level drawn back down. Highlights today included Long-billed Dowitchers, Solitary, Pectoral, and Least sandpipers, Semipalmated Plovers, Lesser Yellowlegs, and Common, Forster’s, and Caspian terns. This impoundment also held a fair diversity of ducks, including Northern Pintail, Blue-winged and Green-winged teal, and Northern Shoveler.

6. Whether the auto tour goes all the way east, north, and then west around MS 5, or simply goes north between MS 4 and MS 5, from that point it will go west for a mile and a half to the exit onto Veler Road and back to State Route 2. From there you can turn right to make a quick check of Metzger Marsh (see map here) if you have time, or turn left to loop back toward the refuge Visitors’ Center. If you do the latter, it’s worthwhile to detour down Krause and Stange roads (see map) and watch for birds of open fields. Sandhill Cranes have been seen here several times recently.

If you go to the refuge this weekend, please take a moment to thank someone there for the extra work they have put in for birders.  The entire staff has gotten involved in one way or another, and so have many volunteers who work through the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge Association (ONWRA), the independent "friends' group" for the refuge.  All of the National Wildlife Refuges are incredibly valuable for bird conservation, whether or not they cater to birders specifically.  But when a refuge's manager, staff, and volunteers make an extra effort for birders, we should let them know that it's appreciated. 

East Harbor State Park hotspots and migrants, Sept. 10

Although this photo was taken in spring, the male Black-throated Blue Warbler looks pretty much the same at all seasons, an encouraging point for birders who are apprehensive about "confusing fall warblers." On September 10 I saw at least ten Black-throated Blues at East Harbor. photo by Kenn Kaufman.

Saturday September 10: This afternoon I made a brief check of East Harbor State Park, another of the field trip sites for the Midwest Birding Symposium (MBS), and found very good numbers and variety of migrants. East Harbor SP is on the edge of Lake Erie in Ottawa County, east of Port Clinton and west of Lakeside.

The entrance to East Harbor is on the east side of State Route 269, about a mile north of State Route 163. After entering the park, in a couple of hundred yards, the first left turn will take you to the parking area for the Lockwood picnic shelter. I have always had good luck with migrants in this general area – either in the thickets to the east of the pond and Frisbee-golf course (east of the parking lot), in the woods at the beginning of the Meadow Trail (just west of the parking lot), or in the woods around and to the south of the picnic shelter. This evening the latter area held a concentration of at least 70 small birds. Chickadees, titmice, and nuthatches were the nucleus of the flock, but the majority of the birds (more than 50) were migrants. American Redstart and Magnolia Warbler were the most numerous, and the flock also contained multiples of Cape May, Bay-breasted, Blackpoll, Black-throated Blue, Black-and-white, and other warblers, plus at least three Philadelphia Vireos and several Warbling and Red-eyed vireos. This flock was moving fast and doubling back through the area, and with the heavy overcast of it was a challenge to keep up with the birds and see them well.
(NOTE: According to current plans, the parking lot for Lockwood picnic shelter is one of the spots where the guides will meet participants on Friday and Saturday mornings, Sept. 16 and 17, during the MBS.)

(Incidentally, it was in this area – first part of the southern end of the Meadow Trail – where the Kirtland’s Warbler was found during the Midwest Birding Symposium two years ago. I don’t expect lightning to strike twice here, but I did make a pass through and look at the spot for tradition’s sake.)

To reach the other area where I’ve consistently had good luck with migrants, go in the park entrance and follow the signs straight ahead for the Beach, about a mile to the east. It’s not much of a beach at the moment, but if you turn right and go to the south end of the parking lot, you’ll come to a nice paved path that leads south into the woods paralleling the edge of the lake. The woods here often have flocks of warblers, as they did this afternoon, with multiples of Blackburnian, Wilson’s, Bay-breasted, Blackpoll, and others. Heavily fruiting dogwoods along the path also produced Gray-cheeked and Swainson’s thrushes, several Warbling and Red-eyed vireos, and at least one Philadelphia Vireo. Yellow-bellied and Least flycatchers were in this area also. NOTE: According to current plans, this is the other spot where guides will meet participants on Friday and Saturday mornings, Sept. 16 and 17, during the MBS.

Finally, if you turn left instead of right when you reach the beach and go to the northernmost parking lot, you reach the best vantage point in the park for terns and gulls. A series of four rocky “islands” offshore offer resting spots for birds when people scare them off the beach. Today this area had about 380 Common Terns, 16 Forster’s Terns, 5 Caspian Terns, 82 Bonaparte’s Gulls, 30 Herring Gulls, and 85 Ring-billed Gulls. No unusual species were with them today, but in other years I’ve seen Lesser Black-backed Gull here in September.