Migration Prediction, Sept. 15 to 20

So far this fall season, conditions have not been ripe for a major fallout of migrants in northwestern Ohio. Good numbers of birds are passing through, but no days so far have produced exceptional numbers. As far as I can tell from the weather forecasts, that general situation will continue through this next weekend.

Tonight (Monday night, Sept. 14) may be the best conditions for bringing a strong flight, with winds out of the northwest for at least part of the night, so there may be a good influx of migrants right along the Lake Erie shoreline on Tuesday morning. After that, most of the forecasts suggest that the wind will be light and variable out of the east or northeast for most of the week. There will still be a lot of migrants around, but they’re likely to be in scattered flocks within two or three miles of the lake shore, not concentrated in woodlots on the lake shore itself. So the key to successful birding will be to cover a variety of areas, and to keep moving until you find a concentration of migrants.

Of course, weather forecasts can change, and I’ll be watching to see if conditions seem to favor a big arrival of birds on a particular day. And even on a slow day, as I've pointed out before, there are more migrants to be seen here than in most areas of North America.

Access to local birding sites

With many birders coming into northwest Ohio now for fall migration, and especially for the Midwest Birding Symposium scheduled for Sept. 17-20, here are a couple of notes about access to birding sites.

Pipe Creek Wildlife Area (on the east edge of Sandusky) is closed at the moment except for those with special use permits. It will probably be open again after September 20, but I don’t have confirmation of this.

At Magee Marsh Wildlife Area, there is currently some construction along the entrance road. (Please note, the timing is an unfortunate coincidence, and not the fault of the Division of Wildlife, which is making sure that the road stays open through this coming weekend.) You may have to plan a couple of extra minutes for driving back to the Sportsmen’s Migratory Bird Center, the Wildlife Beach, or the Boardwalk, but these areas will remain accessible through September 20. The road will be closed at its junction with State Route 2 on Monday and Tuesday, Sept. 21 and 22, so those would be good days to bird other sites. The trails at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge or the woodlot at Metzger Marsh would be good alternate sites in the same immediate area to look for songbird migrants.

For those visiting before Sept. 21, note that BSBO’s Window on Wildlife and the trail behind the observatory (just north of SR 2 at the entrance to Magee Marsh)have had a lot of action during the last few days, with birds like Cape May, Magnolia, and Wilson’s Warblers, Ovenbird, Scarlet Tanager, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Yellow-throated Vireo, et cetera. With northerly winds, the birds seem to be well dispersed through woods a short distance south of the lake, and not concentrated in the woodlots on the immediate lake shore.

Finding Fall Warblers: the importance of flocks

A Blackpoll Warbler in typical fall plumage, lurking among the leaves

Woodlots along the Lake Erie shoreline in northwest Ohio hold excellent numbers of migrant warblers in fall as well as in spring, but fall is more challenging and requires a different strategy. In spring, you can find many warblers just by wandering along the Magee Marsh boardwalk and stopping wherever you see clusters of birders. In fall, birders are less numerous and the warblers and other birds are less conspicuous.

In fall, even more than in spring, there is a strong tendency for the warblers to be in flocks. These flocks may be only loosely organized, but there may be anywhere from three or four to thirty or forty birds traveling in the same general area. So if you see one warbler, it is a good idea to stop and look around very carefully for others. Chances are you’ll find more nearby.

These individuals and flocks tend to be inconspicuous, so you need to watch for movement and listen for chip notes. Often the warblers will be associated with Black-capped Chickadees or sometimes with Downy Woodpeckers, so if you see or hear those species, again, it’s a good idea to check the surrounding area, even spending a couple of minutes scanning and waiting for warblers to appear. And when you do find warblers, stick with the flock for a while, until you’re sure that you’re seeing every individual bird for at least the second time.

In fall, in between flocks, things can seem extremely quiet -- almost scary-quiet. Spring warblers may be concentrated in flocks as well, but between flocks in spring we have other birds, resident birds, actively singing on territory. With those lacking in fall, the woods can seem dead until we find a flock. It takes a certain amount of resolve to keep going and searching when the woods seem absolutely birdless. But with persistence, practically any day in fall along the lake shore, we’ll eventually find those roving flocks to make the effort worthwhile.

East Harbor State Park, Sept. 11

Late this afternoon (Friday Sept. 11) I checked out several areas in East Harbor State Park, just east of Port Clinton. In the area of the swimming beach and around the small offshore islands there were good numbers of Ring-billed, Herring, and Bonaparte's Gulls, plus two Lesser Black-backed Gulls (both in second-cycle plumages). There didn't seem to be any other small gulls associated with the approximately 100 Bonaparte's, but this would be a logical time and place to look for Little Gull.

The area south of the southernmost beach parking lot has extensive trails through the woods, and in the past I've often found this area to be very good for fall migrants. Today it was surprisingly quiet, with few birds of any kind and almost no migrants. The wind was strong out of the east and it has been that way a lot recently, so this rather exposed eastern edge of the park may have had the birds blown out. With a shift in wind direction, of course, it could be excellent again sometime in the next few days.

Checking other areas in the park, I found a couple of mixed flocks of warblers in the thickets of dogwood and other trees around the edge of the "frisbee golf" course, northeast of the Lockwood picnic area near the park exit. Most interesting were two Mourning Warblers, only loosely associated with the other warblers. As usual at this season, I noticed them first by their odd "thick" chipnote, and managed to pish them up out of the thickets. Notable among the larger birds were three Bald Eagles overhead and more than 50 Wood Ducks on the sheltered bays.

Migration prediction, Sept. 8 to 12

Over the Labor Day weekend that just ended, numbers of songbird migrants were fairly low in the woodlots along the Lake Erie shoreline. Most of the expected species were around, but it took some digging to find them.

Looking at the weather predictions for the next few days (Tuesday through Saturday, Sept. 8 to 12), I don’t expect any major arrival of warblers and other songbirds before the weekend. A few will probably slip in between rain showers overnight Monday night and probably a few more Tuesday night, on east-northeast winds, so there may be modest turnover and fair variety in the migrant traps on Tuesday and Wednesday, Sept. 8 - 9. After that, the winds are supposed to be strong out of the east and southeast for several days and nights, not good conditions for bringing in more migrants. Determined birders still will be able to find a decent variety but not without some effort.

I don’t have a lot of faith in the weather predictions beyond Saturday, and things may change before then anyway, but the current forecast is for winds to stay mostly east or southeast through the middle of next week. If that happened and then the winds switched to northwest, there COULD be a huge influx of migrants around September 17th -- just in time for the Midwest Birding Symposium. That would be a sweet deal for all the visiting birders.

Of course, there’s a good chance that the weather forecast will change, as it often does! But we’ll be watching the weather maps closely to try to predict when the next big arrival of migrants will be. In the meantime, remember that there are great possibilities for birds here even on a "slow" day, so it’s always worthwhile to get out and look around.

Red Knot at Maumee Bay State Park

A juvenile Red Knot was found at Maumee Bay State Park, on the inland beach just 100 yards south of the Lake Erie beach, several days ago. I expected that it would be driven away by all the weekend crowds going to the state park over Labor Day weekend, but the bird was seen all three days of the weekend, Saturday through Monday, Sept. 5 through 7, so there's a fair chance that it will stick around for a few days more. Apparently it has become habituated to the presence of people so it is unusually approachable. This is a good chance for local birders to get a close look at this striking plumage, with the sharp scalloping on the gray feathers of the back, scapulars, and wing coverts.

Magee boardwalk migrants 8/28

Early fall birding at the boardwalk at Magee Marsh Wildlife Area has a very different feel from birding there in spring. In mid-April, you can traverse the boardwalk and feel pretty certain that you're seeing every warbler there, even if it's only four or five species. In early fall there are a lot more individuals and a LOT more variety, but you can't even hope to see every bird. The vegetation is just so thick that it's a challenge to see birds. But you can tell that there are a lot of them around, so it's sort of like reaching into a grab bag to see what selection you can come up with.

Between rain showers today (Friday, August 28 -- it would have been Roger Tory Peterson's 101st birthday) I made a quick check of the west end of the boardwalk. As expected at this season, migrants are strongly clustered in small flocks, with essentially no birds in between flocks. Still, in a short visit I was able to find a couple of mixed flocks and a good diversity of migrants. The two good concentrations were near number 6 on the boardwalk and between numbers 8 and 9. For the locations of these numbers, go to our birding pages and follow the links for "birding hotspots: maps and directions."

It was interesting to see five Veeries and no other brown thrushes; Veery is quite an early migrant in fall. Three Yellow-bellied Flycatchers were of interest also, and migrant warblers included three Chestnut-sided, three Tennessee, two Nashville, one Wilson's, one Black-and-white, and one Black-throated Blue. I also saw one Prothonotary Warbler, something of a surprise; Prothonotaries nest here, but the species is such an early fall migrant that it's quite possible that the local nesters have left already and that this was a stray from elsewhere. A Philadelphia Vireo and several Warbling Vireos were feeding on the conspicuous whitish fruits of Roughleaf Dogwood (Cornus drummondii), as were two of the Veeries, several Cedar Waxwings, and a couple of Downy Woodpeckers. The most anomalous sighting was of a single Red-breasted Nuthatch in the cypress trees near no. 6 on the boardwalk ... I'm not sure what it was doing here at this season.

Be advised that there are a lot of mosquitoes in the woods at Magee now, enough that I actually used repellant, which I seldom do. Be sure to carry repellant if you want to have an enjoyable birding experience there in the next few days. Also note that some fallen leaves have accumulated on the boardwalk, and these can be extremely slippery, especially when they're wet.

At the Black Swamp Bird Observatory (just north of Ohio State Route 2 at the entrance to Magee Marsh), Karen Zach saw several migrants this afternoon visiting the water feature outside the Window on Wildlife, the most notable being a Mourning Warbler. BSBO will be open 11 to 5 both days this weekend, August 29 and 30.

Shorebirds at Pickerel Creek Wildlife Area

Today I spent about two and a half hours in early evening at Pickerel Creek Wildlife Area, Sandusky Co., concentrating on one impoundment that has been most productive recently (see below for directions). The highlight was the presence of two Red Knots, juveniles in beautiful fresh plumage, silvery gray with fine dark subterminal scalloping on the scapulars and coverts. Red Knots are very uncommon migrants in Ohio and this is on the early side of the migration for juveniles; the reports I'd heard so far for this fall, elsewhere near Lake Erie, had been of adults.

These two Red Knots were present the whole time I was there, but there was a marked amount of turnover in the species composition and numbers of other shorebirds. Most of the birds seemed flighty, flushing repeatedly (often for no obvious reason) and flying around before settling again, thus "shuffling the deck" in terms of which birds were located where.

This is a very interesting time of the fall to be looking at shorebirds, because of the mix of adults and juveniles. Although it's fairly consistent for the peak migration of adults to be earlier than the peak migration of juveniles, the ratio of ages on a given date will vary by species. So today, in late August, I was seeing no adult Short-billed Dowitchers (they've mostly gone farther south or at least to the coast by now) and I was seeing no juvenile White-rumped Sandpipers (they probably won't show up here until September).

Other notables on the evening of the 24th included:
Hudsonian Godwit: one molting adult, undoubtedly the same individual that was here last week. This bird didn't appear until I had been there for almost two hours, and after Sheryl Young had also been there for half an hour; we looked up from our scopes and the godwit was out in an obvious spot in the open. I assume that it flew in silently while we were glued to our scopes.
Western Sandpiper: one brightly patterned juvenile was present when I first arrived, but then I didn't see it again.
Baird's Sandpiper: one juvenile was flying around calling for a while, then landed for a few minutes, then left.
White-rumped Sandpiper: up to eight present at once, a good number. All were adults.
Pectoral Sandpiper: up to 50 present, still mostly adults, but with a few juveniles mixed in.
Semipalmated Sandpiper (at least 100) and Least Sandpiper (at least 20): almost all juveniles now, just a few adult Semis.
Lesser Yellowlegs: still a mix of ages, mostly juveniles but a few adults.
Short-billed Dowitcher: five juveniles. No Long-billeds were present.
Interesting (and further evidence of the turnover here) was the absence of Stilt Sandpipers; observers last week were finding good numbers of these.

Aside from shorebirds, other interesting birds included several flocks of Bobolinks (possibly coming into the marshes to roost for the night) and a migrant Northern Waterthrush in the small woodlot.

For those who haven't been there, Pickerel Creek Wildlife Area is well marked with signs along U.S. Highway 6 between Fremont and Sandusky, and the easiest way to find the exact spot is to find the observation deck on the north side of Route 6, about 8 miles east-northeast of Fremont. From the the observation deck, drive a couple of hundred yards east to where a canal runs straight north from the highway, and pull in and park in the large dirt parking area on the east side of this canal. Then walk north a quarter mile on the road that follows the canal, past a small woodlot, and look in the large impoundment just north of this woodlot. The best view is looking east from up along the west side, so the light is best in the afternoon, and a scope is essential for decent views. I didn't check the impoundment just north of the observation deck, but it had good numbers of birds reported last week.

Shorebirds at Ottawa NWR

The auto tour at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge will be open on Saturday, August 15. I was at the refuge today (Friday the 14th), and found that the best shorebirding along the auto tour route was at MS 3. (To see where this is located, follow the links from the BSBO birding pages for "Birding Hotspots: maps and directions"). To see the birds on MS 3, the best approach is to park near the southeast corner of this impoundment and walk 10 or 20 yards north to a vantage point between the southeast corner of MS 3 and the southwest corner of MS 4. A telescope will be almost essential here.

Shorebirds on this impoundment today included one American Golden-Plover, several Black-bellied and Semipalmated Plovers, Solitary Sandpiper, Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, Short-billed Dowitcher, Wilson's Snipe, Pectoral Sandpipers, a few Semipalmated Sandpipers, and large numbers of Least Sandpipers, almost all of the latter being juveniles in beautiful fresh plumage. A Peregrine buzzed the shorebirds here at least once. A few Snowy Egrets were far back on the impoundment with the more numerous Great Egrets, and several Bald Eagles were seen in the area.

Elsewhere on the refuge, I heard Sedge Wrens singing at Stange Prairie at first light, but they were silent when I checked the area again near midday. At least 30 Black-crowned Night-Herons were along the north-south causeway between MS 4 and MS 5. Along the walking trails (away from the auto tour) there are still some shorebirds on Pool 2a, but conditions are becoming less favorable there.

In terms of shorebirds that avoid the shore -- just after noon on the 14th, an American Woodcock was preening out in the open just outside the Window on Wildlife at BSBO. No guarantees that it will show up there again soon, but the observatory will be open on both Saturday and Sunday this weekend.

Sedge Wrens at Ottawa NWR

Sedge Wren is an uncommon and local breeding bird in northwest Ohio, with its locations often changing from year to year, so it can be a tough species for birders to catch up with. Right now there are a number of singing males at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, in the Stange Prairie in the southwestern part of the main unit of the refuge. (See our maps of the refuge, available through the BSBO birding pages under "birding hotspots: directions and maps" for clarification.) On Thursday June 18 there were at least five singing males on the prairie, possibly more. They were singing frequently, and they would often perch up on a stalk above the top of the grass for a minute or two at a time while singing. The birds are far enough out in the grass that you'll need a telescope for good views. The birds might be visible any time from the observation platform on Stange Road just south of Krause Road. Or if you take the Ottawa auto tour (open Saturday June 20, from 9 to 4) you can see them by looking south from the road just across from MS 7. In this area you can actually listen to Marsh Wrens singing from the cattails on the north side of the road, Sedge Wrens singing from the field on the south side.