Pelagic Birding in Molly and Larry's Big Year Pelagic Birding

 Birding Vanning Across the Unites States Part III The Route back

Piping plover Tawas State Park

                                                     Birding the Heartland Of the USA

Clear Creek, Magee, Tawas, Indian dunes and more on our way home.

After leaving North Carolina we drove through Virginia and camped and birded at Douthat State Park before heading towards the Great Lakes via Southern Ohio.

Scarlet tanager Douthat State Park Virginia

Ohio

We left Virginia and drove north  through Amish land.  We were amazed by the strength of the horses leading Amish women in wagons up the steep hills.  Southern Ohio is not like the flat  Ohio along Lake Erie.  It was once described to me as the start of Appalachian mountains.  And it is the home to one of best one day birding spots in the United States: Clear Creek Metro Park.

Magee Marsh in Northern Ohio is perhaps the most famous birding site in the United States. But Clear Creek is a different, more athletic and peaceful birding experience than the busy Magee Marsh boardwalk. For all day birding with cuckoos, vireos, creeks, hills and deep ravines you can't beat Clear Creek.

Clear Creek is an also a great place for both southern and northern warblers.  In fact it is the only place where we identified Kentucky, Worm-eating, and Cerulean Warblers in all of 2024.  Historically, only at Tawas Point State Park have I identified as many species warblers as I have at Clear Creek. (21)

On May 13 we rolled into Clear Creek Metro Park.

  Twenty-five  baby Common Mergansers 

You start  the Clear Creek hike in the valley where we saw the Baby mergansers and heard the Cerulean Warbler.  Then you head up steep hills listening for warblers, vireos galore (especially Red-eyed) and the clacking call of the Yellow-billed cuckoo.    

Kentucky Warbler

Cuckoo-(Sorry about the harsh light.)

Clear Creek combines a great day of hiking with amazing birding tying Big Bend as my favorite bird and hike day of the year.

Birding the Great Lakes

In 2019 we rented a van and traveled for the first time through the Great Lakes.  My mom who grew up in Toledo Ohio had recently passed and we planned on visiting her sister Patty in Toledo.  While there we birded the marshes along Lake Erie to the east of Toledo including Magee, Ottawa NWR and a great day with the Cleveland Audubon at Howard Marsh.  

The Lake Erie Hotspots avoided development in part because of the boggy land was difficult to develop.  After wonderful birding in the area, including a day with at least six Least Bitterns at Ottawa NWR, I told my no-nonsense Aunt that when I retired I could come each Spring, stay with her, and bird.  She looked me in the eye and said, Oh no, you can't."

But even though we had to find other housing we could not miss Magee doing our Big Year.

Through a potent combination of really good birds and really good  marketing Magee Boardwalk is the best known migration site in the United States.  Some birders complain that it is too crazy during Spring Migration and you should head straight to Tawas. But we highly recommend visiting Magee in the first couple weeks of May.  Then make sure you go to TAWAS.

The  highlight of the preserve is a .7 miles Boardwalk through swampy ponds.  Where else can you walk an elevated boardwalk and look a Prothonotary Warbler in the eye? Also if you need some help with your warbler identification you have an aisle full of experts at your side.  The bird's eye view from the  boardwalk is the place to sharpen your knowledge of Blackburnian, Northern Parulas, American redstarts and other warblers in breeding plumage.

The site of some many happy birders, including large groups of Amish should not be missed.

Prothonotary and Blackpoll  warblers Magee.  

Interesting,  birding Magee on May 14th of a, to paraphrase Ed Sullivan, our 'really big year' netted only the Canada Warbler as a new bird for the year.

A big year is a chance to see far away loved ones.  My Aunt Pat in Toledo near Magee.

Tawas and a Michigan Have-to Warbler

We didn't have a lot of time.  Our flight to Alaska was scheduled for May 29th.   We had to head North from Ohio for two main reasons to find the Kirtland's Warbler and to bird the amazing Tawas Point State Park.   The Kirtland's Warbler is a habitat specialist who nests in young Jack Pine forests.  The loss of Jack Pines and an aggressive population of Brown-headed Cowbirds who lay their eggs in the warbler's nest led the Kirkland to be given endangered species status.  And so far it worked as slowly the population has slowly increased.

Kobs/Curtis Rd. Kirtland’s Warbler Mgt. Area more or less on the way to Tawas Point State Park was our target area for Kirtlands (there is a better area to the northwest but time was of the essence).  

Jack Pine forests are kind of creepy.  The trees are spaced close together, the soil is sandy and there are not a lot birds readily seen.  You listen along the edge of the forests.  And then suddenly the snappy song of the Kirkland.  There he is up near the top.  We found three warblers and quickly headed to Tawas State Park.

Kirtland's Warbler

Tawas ranked with Big Bend as the best campsite with awesome birding an easy walk away.  You wake from your campsite, sip your coffee. and head pass the beautiful lighthouse to the point.  Along the way you scan every tree and bush with open eyes and open ears. 

The daunting trip across Lake Huron draws a great diversity of birds in the month of May to Tawas.  Rose Breasted Grosbeak, Orchard Orioles, Piping plovers, Bobolink, Warblers are just some of the birds on the walk from the campground.

Can you spot the Magnolia warbler?

Baltimore oriole nest building a Magee

Cuckoo!!!!!

Blackburnian

Bobolink (look closely)

Rose-breasted grosbeaks at Tawas

The lovely Yellow Warbler

As the photos above show, Tawas during migration, should have a big sign that says We're not just migrating Warblers.

The last couple of years after Tawas, we headed north to the Upper Peninsula, (check the palm map) for Upland sandpiper in the pothole region and to visit Whitefish Point for grouse, Upland sandpipers and others species.  And in a normal year we recommend the UP (Upper peninsula).

But this was our big year and there was no time to cross the Bridge to northern Michigan.  Luckily  Ebird reported two Upland sandpipers at the Muskegon Wastewater System west of Tawas on Lake Michigan.

Lake Michigan is the only Great Lake completely inside United States borders. And it would be hard to manage a successful ABA big year not including some of the lakes noted hotspots. 

Muskegon came through with a couple of skittish Uplands. (ps Many thanks to the staff who give you advice and let you drive their grounds to find your bird.  This is not true of all sanitation areas.)

Uplanders!

The next area in our quick foray west and along Lake Michigan was the Indiana Dunes National Park.

On the 17th we spent the night in the very cute Indiana town of Chesterton.  A quick check of our year list showed we still lacked Eastern whippoorwill and we were running out of time.  With some coaxing Molly joined me for the nightjar hunt.  She was more than a little tired and probably thought of our search as more of a nightmare hunt.  But after a short walk down a trail inland from the dunes.  As I was thinking "Say your name @&%@@,"  I suddenly heard 'Whippoorwill! Yes!  

The next day we birded along the dunes.  The highlight were the swallows especially watching the Bank Swallows going in and out of nests on the side of the dunes.  One of the best days of birding without a new year bird.

Bank swallow entering its nest.

Barn swallow at the Dunes

 Perhaps the best know birding spot on Lake Michigan is the Montrose Bird Sanctuary on the lake in the heart of Chicago our next stop.  And Chicago came through with our first  Yellow-bellied flycatcher of the year.  

                                                           Big Year Exotics

A Big Year Birder can not forget their exotics. My list of eight hundred and one birds includes seventy exotics.  Of those, thirty-two were birds we identified on the Hawaiian Islands, the last being the Lavender Waxbill. 

Exotics are classified on Ebird as either naturalized like the European Starling, provisional like the Mute Swan or an Escapee like the Black billed Magpie Jay we enjoy in San Diego.  Naturalized birds have long established populations that have moved beyond their initial point of introduction, Provisional birds have had been breeding in an area for at least fifteen years. Only Naturalized and Provisional birds count for the Big Year.

The European Goldfinch had just been added as a countable bird by the ABA Record Committee on March 5th.  Just in time for us to stop at the Stakeout European goldfinch  hotspot just forty miles from the Montrose hotspot.

The birds were hanging out in trees in front of some office buildings.  Molly saw them quickly but it took me three hours to get this photo.  Molly had retreated to the van by then.  

Why were they here?  The short answer is that a pet importer in Chicago released a bunch of birds in 2004 and the Goldfinches stuck in Wisconsin and Chicago.

To read more in depth about the history of these goldfinches in the United States see (https://neobiota.pensoft.net/article/97736/element/4/449//)

Euro Goldfinches

Now it is was time for another exotic hunt.  The European tree sparrow has a breeding population near Peoria, Illinois.  We headed to the Powerton Hotspot, but the gate to the reservoir was locked. Some fishing guys and their kids passed us fish in a bucket before they climbed the fence.   Molly and I would have to return the nest day

We didn't have a campsite and all the Peoria hotels were filled for, believe it or not, Middle School State Track Championships.  Molly and parked the van at the local Bass Sporting Goods Store.  (Don't kick the bucket, Molly, it is not filled with fish.)

The next day found our Eurasian Tree Sparrows.  They are so cute and they were cavity nesting.  Twenty Eurasian tree sparrows were brought from Germany in 1820.  But they have been outcompeted by House Sparrows and there is a small stable population in Illinois.  Unlike the House Sparrows they appear to leave local species alone.

Eurasian tree sparrows

Excellent!  Time to look for a Henslow Sparrow.  

(Ongoing question:  Do you find Grassland sparrows or Owls as the hardest birds group of birds to find?).   I think about this a lot because they are my too biggest challenges.

We heard a Henslow singing at Foster Roads Pasture. Then we found a Connecticut Warbler at the Tawny Oaks Field Station and left Illinois.

Onto Nebraska:  Molly and I needed to find our  last remaining continental warbler, the Mourning Warbler.    Ebird directed us to two parks in the Omaha area.

We did not find a Mourning Warbler at Hanscom Park but we did find a really beautiful hawk.  The hawk was the one Ebird bird we misidentified on this leg of the trip.  We looked at the white feathers and the shaggy legs and thought, 'What's a Rough-legged Hawk doing here?" But the Ebird reviewer contacted us and said Krider's subspecies of Red-tail."

Later in the afternoon we found our Mourning Warbler along a well-vegetated creek in Walnut Grove Park.  We also loved this Groundhog up a tree.   

Groundhog up a a tree Walnut Grove Park Nebraska.

Nebraska is famous for its big migration of Sandhill Cranes.  But we were looking not for cranes but godwits, bright, long distant migrating Hudsonian Godwits.  They go from Argentina to Alaska but some stop right here on the way--we hope!!)

Yes! Branched Oak SRA in Nebraska came through not only with the  godwits but also one more owl. 

 (ongoing question:  Owls and grassland birds which is the hardest to ID? At least owls call most of the year)

Early in the morning of May 20 a chorus of  "Who Cooks for You?"  woke us up in the campground.  Our only Barred Owls of the Big Year.

Then that day we birded all along the reservoir and counted fifty-eight species, including:

Spotted sandpiper by Molly

Ruddy Turnstones

      And best of all our first and only Hudsonian Godwits of the year.                      

Our Trip west next took us to Fort Collins home of my niece..  On the drive we picked up 

Prairie falcon and then visited Soapstone Prairie outside Fort Collins.

Shrike and Prairie dog at Soapstone

It was time to head home.  We had a plane to catch in nine days to Alaska.  But wait Ebird says there is a Yellow-headed Caracara in Long Beach area.  There is one in Florida we didn't see and I'll be darn if you miss it again.  We turned south and headed into the Los Angeles metropolitan area.  We pulled into a strip mall parking lot.  The Caracara was eating discarded (maybe intentionally) chicken.  Now we could head home.

Love that chicken at Popeyes!

Time to say Good-bye to Birdvan for a while.

Oh and one last species at home before we head to Alaska.  With our friend Natalie the Naturalist this lovely Owlet was not easier than your average Grassland bird to find.

Spotted owl Marin County 5/26

Next stop Alaska!