Good morning birders, twitchers, twitchy birders, bitchy twirlers, and anyone looking for a feathered respite from our bird-brained politics.
In mid May, my wife and I spent three days in northwestern Ohio, one of the best spots in North America for viewing the spring bird migration. The marshland along Lake Erie attracts an astounding variety of migrants, who stop to rest before crossing the lake into Canada.
This fact is not lost on birders, thousands of whom come from all over the world to fill the motels and guesthouses in and around Toledo during the first three weeks of May. A significant proportion of the visitors are crazy-serious birders with tripod-mounted, full-frame cameras and lenses that need their own suitcases and cost more than my car. But it is a welcoming environment for birders of all skill levels.
The Erie shore features several great birding spots within 30 minutes of Toledo. The Magee Marsh Boardwalk, part of the state-run Magee Marsh Wildlife Area, is the crown jewel for songbird lovers. Its trees host a mind-boggling gathering of warblers — the tiny, colorful migrants that are perennial favorites of birders because of their gorgeous plumage and high degree of difficulty for spotting and photographing.
On a typical May day, particularly early in the month during The Biggest Week in American Birding festival, the boardwalk is packed wall-to-wall with birders. Sounds like a terrible atmosphere for seeing skittish birds up close, right? Actually, it’s great! The birds are too hungry to care about the crowds and have no qualms about feeding in the smaller trees just feet from the khaki-clad gawkers. And the crowds make it easy to find sought-after species. Just point your binoculars or camera where everyone else is pointing.
For the most part, the expert birders are friendly and helpful (“Has anyone seen a Canada warbler today?” “Yes, in the willow trees near the East entrance.”). In fact, the communication is so good that you have to be careful what you say. During our first hour there, I told my wife that I really wanted to photograph a Blackburnian warbler. Suddenly, everyone around us exclaimed, “a Blackburnian? Where? Where?”
The undisputed stars of the show were indeed the warblers.
The Cape May was one of 11 (!!) warbler species I had never previously seen. In total, I got 27 lifer birds on the trip — in just 3 days. While that doesn’t compare to my 70 lifers in Costa Rica, it blew away any previous trip within the Continental U.S.
The yellows were extremely abundant. By the end of the first day, they had become the primary disappointment bird (i.e., “ooh, what’s that?. . .Oh, just a yellow”).
I couldn’t figure out where the green was on the black-throated green — but at least the black throat was clear:
“Prothonotary” is a clunky name for such a cute little bird. I guess obstreperous and crepuscular were already taken:
“American redstart” is a weird name too. As Lisa Simpson once said, “I know what all of those words mean, but that doesn’t make any sense.”
Yellowthroats are ground dwellers, and were relatively difficult to see. Speaking of which, the rest of the warbler photos are less than ideal, often representing the only bird of that species we saw.
We didn’t see a Canada until the third day. That was a big target of ours, and some generous birders helped us find it:
A golden-winged was another big find. This was one of those “point the camera where the mob is pointing” shots — and where they were pointing was a long way away. I never would have seen it on my own:
The ovenbird is another elusive ground dweller. I guess ovens and direct sunlight don’t mix:
The first warbler we saw as we arrived was a lifer: a black-throated blue. Not to be confused with the black-throated green above, or the black-throated gray found in the western U.S.:
I had previously mentioned the desire to get some better Blackburnian shots. This was indeed better than the one I got in Texas two years ago, but still not what I had hoped for:
And finally, the Volunteer State’s two contributions to warbler nomenclature:
I saw two other species: Wilson’s warbler and yellow-rumped warbler. The latter are so common in my Texas neighborhood that I didn’t even bother to point my camera at them.
Here are some highlights from the non-warblers, starting with my first-ever picture of an America Birdie that isn’t soaring overhead. They were nesting in at least two trees near the boardwalk:
We spent every morning on the Magee Marsh Boardwalk, as well as the first afternoon. To mix it up, we spent the second afternoon at Maumee Bay State Park and the third afternoon at Howard Marsh Metropark, two marshland parks closer to Toledo. Unfortunately, the waterbird watching was subpar because of recent flooding. Maumee had fruit feeders, though:
Across the parking lot from the Magee boardwalk was a small stretch of beach along the lake. One of the trees adjacent to it had a great horned owl nest that drew throngs of onlookers:
My wife is obsessed with screech owls, and we had never seen the red variety before this trip. A kind gentleman helped us find this one at Maumee:
Yellow-headed blackbirds must be relatively rare up there, because this one at Howard Marsh had the serious birders in a frenzy:
As we walked down the path at Maumee, a man hurriedly raced by us, but was gracious enough to turn around and say “someone spotted a sora.” I don’t know waterbirds well, so I wasn’t sure if he was reciting Dr. Seuss or something. But we followed him to another lifer:
One final lifer to round out the diary:
Overall, this was an amazing trip, and relatively easy to pull off. Toledo is less than an hour from the Detroit airport and features plenty of affordable lodging (book in advance for May, though). It has enough good restaurants to please all but the biggest snobs, and the locals we met were pleasant and down-to-earth.
Thanks for reading! Please chime in with your bird sightings, sitings, citings, questions, answers, fantasies, and nightmares.