2010 Queen City Bird Festival

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Saturday, May 15th, my mother and nephews, Ashley and I attended the 3rd Annual Queen City Bird Festival held at Hueston Woods State Park in Butler Co. Ohio. The Queen City Bird Festival was created by my friend Jill Russell from the Avian Research and Education Institute. She is the one that brings it all together and makes it all happen. Other local organizations and institutions that also help make it all possible include Oxbow Inc., Audubon Miami Valley and the College of Mount St. Joseph.

As in previous years, I helped out by running a station for children teaching them how to identify common birds that they may see around their feeders and yards. I am always surprised by the breadth of knowledge of these kids. There were numerous educational and entertaining events for the young birders ranging from bird bingo and face painting to bird banding and bird walks. A highlight for many was a flyover of an adult Bald Eagle right over the crowd!

The Keynote Speaker for the event was Thane Maynard, Director of the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. I always get moved to do more for conservation after hearing him speak about the progress that has been and is still occurring with endangered species.

Thane Maynard brought along his friend Charlie, an African Penguin. He was a big hit with the kids!

This year, I was able to bring two of my nephews to the event. They loved it! They told their siblings about it and they want to go next year!

My nephews at the Queen City Bird Festival with their Audubon Plush Birds they won.

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Wordless Wednesday

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Killdeer nest or lack thereof...

Get wordless at Wordless Wednesday

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Birdathon 2010: A summary

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The 2010 Birdathon was held May 7-8th. The goal of the Birdathon is to raise money for local conservation organizations by seeing as many different species of birds from 5pm Friday to 5pm Saturday (24 hr period) in a pre-determined radius centered on the Oxbow in SE Indiana (Oxbow area). Pledges are solicited from friends and members, the more species seen collectively, the more money that is raised for the local conservation organizations. This year my team consisted of Dave Brinkman, Dr. Jon Seymour (President of Oxbow, Inc.), and myself. Although our team entered in as "non-competitive" this year, we still ended up with a good number of species I thought. For the first time in my Birdathon experience, we decided to camp at Miami Whitewater campground instead of sleeping in the car. I am glad that we did. Before setting out, we got word that there was a tornado watch in effect until early morning. We put the tent up before the 5pm start time while it wasn't raining. Good thing we did. It thunderstormed Friday night, so we stayed in the car until the lightning stopped. The winds were roaring loud all night, but I somehow managed to stay dry and get some sleep in.

And now on to the birds...Both Friday and Saturday, we went to the new Fernald Preserve in northern Hamilton Co. I have been wanting to go here for a while, but it is a drive for me. I really enjoyed this place. The place was a hopping, as I was able to see Dickcissels, Bobolinks, and hear Grasshopper Sparrows all in the same field. The small but very productive biowetlands held all kinds of good birds including shorebirds, Blue-winged Teal, and an American Pipit. I am glad to be able to have a place like this to see so many different species of birds in one place. I was thinking while there that this could be reproduced with only a little work just about anywhere there was open space to do so. It is a shame that it takes something like Fernald's history to guarantee quality bird habitat in SW Ohio, but that is the sad times we live in I guess. I am hoping to go back to this preserve soon.

Friday, we failed to relocate the reported Wilson's Phalarope at the Fernald Biowetlands. We ran into another team that had said they just seen it 15 minutes prior to our arrival. We searched again, still no phalarope. Dang, that would have been a life bird for me!

Lesser Yellowlegs at Fernald Preserve

Saturday we saw quite a few Wild Turkey, including some male toms displaying to hens.

Male tom turkey displaying at Miami Whitewater Forest

We got word that there was another Wilson's Phalarope at a place called lost bridge. I was really hoping to get this bird here, since I just missed it at Fernald. The first visit yielded a Dunlin, Least Sandpipers, Semipalmated Sandpipers, Solitary Sandpipers and Spotted Sandpipers. But still no phalarope.

So we headed out to bird other locations in the area. We ran into another group who stated that they saw a shorebird they were unsure of at lost bridge, so we decided to return there to see if we could find the "odd" bird. Glad we did. Just as we were getting ready to leave the spot, Dave spotted the Wilson's Phalarope flying in fast from the left - life bird for me! It landed in front of us briefly, but then disappeared. Luckily, after a long while, we were able to relocate the bird. Got some good looks at it while it was feeding right in front of us!

Lifer Wilson's Phalarope at Lost Bridge in Hamilton Co. , OH

We also stopped by a place where Lark Sparrows had been seen. This would be another life bird for me. As we approached the area where they were supposed to be, Dave found one on the road in front of us. It fled quick, and I was only able to get a brief look at the head pattern and white outer tail feathers - dang!

At 5pm on Saturday, all the teams got together at Winton Woods for the final tally and pizza. It was nice to see so many birding friends that I haven't seen in a while, some in years. Each team discussed their best bird and best moment of the birdathon. Every year, I see more and more 18 years and under young birders at this event - love this! Kathy McDonald led the Queen City Birder's/Ohio Young Birder's Club team. They got first place in the under 19 years category with 95 species!

My team got 118 species and the winning team got somewhere around 147 total species. But everybody was a winner, raising money for conservation and having fun!

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More details on the SW Ohio (Clermont Co.) chuck

Tweet On Wednesday, April 28, 2010, I heard a Chuck-will's-widow calling in a field behind my property. It was shortly after dusk and the call was repeated for at least approximately 5 minutes. A Barred Owl called right before the chuck started to call. A lot of times owls will get birds to call that normally wouldn't call.

I heard the call loud and clear for at least 3 minutes, until the noise of the neigborhood made the call harder to hear (dogs barking and kids screaming). Since the dog was closer than the chuck, I was unable to get a recording, as I only have a digital camera to do so.

Chuck-will's-widows by Louis Agassiz Fuertes (from Wikipedia)

The habitat that the chuck was in is an old field with Andropogon spp. and other grasses. It has mixed maples, pin oak, and multifloral rose that I can identify.

Here is a photo of the habitat from the area of where I heard the chuck:



Here is an attempt to provide a map of the approximate area of where the chuck was calling from:


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This would make a second record for Clermont Co. for Chuck-will's-widow. The first is of an injured bird found by Raptor Inc. in Milford on or around Dec. 12th, 2004. Details on this bird can be found on the Ohio Ornithological Society's website HERE.

*Addendum: Thanks goes to Bob Foppe for supplying me with info of a chuck specimen found in Clermont Co. on 5/20/1945 from the Owensville area, possibly from the St. Rt. 222 and US 50 area.

Looking at different online sources, one gets a very cloudy idea of the range of Chuck-will's-widow in Ohio.

The source that I put the most faith in is Cornell's All About Birds site. It shows the chuck ranging only in the Adams County/Shawnee - Portsmouth area (southernmost tip of OH) for Ohio.

This site, whatBird.com, shows chucks ranging from Cincinnati eastward to the Ohio-West Virginia border. This is not what I am familiar with, as a chuck in SW Ohio is a rare find.

Here is an article that I found on the Ohio Ornithological Society website that discusses chucks in Ohio in more detail.

I thought that I might have heard it again on Monday night, May 3rd, but it was far off sounding. I have not definitely heard it since that first night. Tweet

A beautiful, shorebirdy day!

Tweet Being such a beautiful day, Ashley and I stopped by East Fork State Park's south beach in Bantam today for some birding. We got a later than I wanted to start, ending up getting there at 2pm. The water was up from the recent rains, so no beach was exposed, just grass. There were quite a few people sunbathing and swimming, so I wasn't expecting much.
Getting out of the car, all I could see were a couple of Ring-billed Gulls and a crow. Some movement caught my eye, and right in front of us a Spotted Sandpiper flew up and out over the water. It started calling, and quickly returned to take perch on a log right in front of us. It posed and gave a look like "look at me, I'm looking at you".

This Spotted Sandpiper is not nearly as intimidating as the mean lookin' Brown Thrasher.

I scanned the shoreline and approximately 50 foot in front of a couple sunbathing, were 12 Willets! They were right in front of us practically and I didn't even notice them. I went back to the car and got the camera. The sunbathing couple gave us an odd look, but didn't say anything when they found out what we were looking at.


We were able to get good looks at them fairly close up. They did not seem at all concerned with us or the closer sunbathers. Then a guy with a dog came up and let the dog off the leash (arrrgghh!!). The birds got antsy and flew out over the lake, calling and circling.

Love those Willet wings!

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