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It's raining warblers
- Posted at 12:54 PM on Monday, November 12, 2007 by Chris Conard This is another of my efforts to catch up. It's hard to justify spending time on the blog when I'm so far behind on so many other things, but if I'm going to procrastinate anyway, I might as well get caught up on something less painful than real work...  One of about 100 Blackpoll Warblers on the shore of Lake Erie in the rain on 10/1/07.Kimya and I took a five-day trip to the Cleveland area to visit her family. We also got in a fair amount of birding and nature-related exploring with her mom. The title of this entry comes from our visit to Sheldon Marsh on Lake Erie. We began our walk with rain threatening. After entering the park, a series of thunder storms passed over. We waited out a few under the overhang of a park maintenance building and had a nice talk with one of the staffers. Once it cleared a bit, we began again, then another series of cloud bursts soaked us to the skin. I'm not sure if the birds were grounded by the storm or already there, but there were dozens of warblers hopping around at eye level. Most were Myrtle (Yellow-rumped) Warblers, with fair numbers of Tennessee Warblers. Another series of cells passed over and we were even wetter as we tried to hide under trees. Kimya and her mom made a run to the car, but I continued to the end of the trail at the lake shore. There, I was surrounded by up to 100 Blackpoll Warblers, many Myrtle and Tennessee Warblers, and single Cape May and Magnolia Warblers. I have never been in such a fallout before. I'm sure that during that very wet hour, I saw 300 individuals. At one point, there were several brushy willows with a dozen Blackpolls in each. It was dark and raining, so I wasn't able to manage good photos with the very slow shutter speeds. I didn't bring my SLR on the trip, but my compact Canon S2 IS is a good compromise. It also takes good video, which turned out much better in the low light. With a couple hours of light left and after such an incredible fallout of warblers, I thought we ought to try our luck at Crane Creek State Park and Magee Marsh. It took longer to get there than planned, but we had enough time to walk the boardwalk along the shore of Lake Erie before dark. Unlike Sheldon Marsh, there wasn't a major fallout, but we did find a Gray-cheeked Thrush--the first look at one I've been truly happy with.  Tinker's Creek FallsCleveland suffers from a very bad image problem. If memory serves, I've visited Cleveland now five times. Most of the visits have been in the fall, with one in the summer and one in late spring. I understand that the weather can be horrible in winter and summer, but we've either lucked out or been there at the right time of year. The heart of the city is gritty, but the surrounding suburbs and parks are nice. In fact, the system of metro parks throughout Ohio is quite wonderful. In addition to birds, we saw several of the area's waterfalls. This Great Blue Heron was fishing above Chagrin Falls, which is right in town.   In addition to Chagrin Falls, on 9/29/07 we visited Liberty Park near Twinsburg. This garter snake crossed the trail.  The insects were a highlight, including this Monarch.  Mantis A life butterfly: Pearl Crescent  The trail through a damp forest tempted us to turn over a few logs.  There were several red-backed salamanders underneath.  These are the largest wasps I have ever seen (about the size of my thumb)  At the end of the day, we found ourselves at Cuyohoga Valley National Park. On the board walk along the Beaver Marsh, we enjoyed watching this huge snapping turtle.   Despite getting out in the field for parts of each day, and a couple of nearly full days, we only managed to see 60 species--yet, many of them we would rarely if ever see in California. Post Comment
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