Carolyn V. Platt - Birds of the Lake Erie Region

Carolyn V. Platt

photography by Gary Meszaros

THE KENT STATE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

Kent, Ohio, & London

The vivid photos and text of Birds of the Lake Erie Region bring back my own glowing memories from trips to the areas extraordinary birding spots. Although a Californian for most of my life, Ive always loved watching birds around Lake Erie and went there often with Sue Tackett, Charlotte Mathena, Larry Rosche, and other companions when I lived for a while in southwestern Ohio. Ill certainly make many more return treks to this remarkable region.

My first birding trip to Lake Erie was on December II, 1980, when we drove up to Presque Isle State Park from Pittsburgh. At Presque Isle, Pennsylvanias finest birding site, we met a young lad named Jerry McWilliams. Over the years Jerry, who is coauthor of The Birds of Pennsylvania, has made many important discoveries there.

On this December day two decades ago, birding conditions were hardly ideal. Snow had fallen for much of the day and was still coming down heavily when we arrived in the afternoon; a gale howled out of the northwest and blew the snow almost horizontally. All was quiet except for wind and the sounds of a few black-capped chickadees and yellow-rumped warblers. At the edge of a field, we found American tree sparrows and in the woods a roosting great horned owl. Offshore we spotted a female surf scoter among many other ducks and witnessed the glorious sight of 500 tundra swans. Braving the wind and snow, we hiked out to the point and were rewarded with a lone snowy owl, a dark immature female.

I came back to Lake Erie the following May, this time to Point Pelee on the north shore, among Canadas most celebrated birding sites. I was co-leading a tour with one of Ontarios best birders, Bob Curry. From such famous names as Roger Tory Peterson, in my teens Id read about the magnificent spring migration at Point Pelee so I knew that weather is a primary factor in the number of migrants appearing there. On bluebird days, a cold wind out of the north can keep most birds south of the lake and leave Pelee almost empty, but on my first trip I was not to be disappointed.

There were migrants everywhere! I had never soon so many flycatchers, vireos, thrushes, warblers, scarlet tanagers, and Baltimore orioles. The trees had not yet leafed out, and the birds were quite visible, giving us great chances to compare similar species. These included spotted Catharus thrushes, the eastern species of Empidonax flycatchers, warbling and Philadelphia vireos, and a northern and Louisiana waterthrush sharing the same pool of water. For the first time, I realized just how pink the legs of a Louisiana were. Another bird I wont soon forget was the Henslows sparrow skulking in the grass just a few feet away.

We observed over thirty species of warbler, and most of the males were in full song. While other locations, such as High Island in eastern Texas and the Dry Tortugas off Key West, Florida, are well-known hot spots for warblers, the mix of species in the Lake Erie region and on the southern edge of Lake Michigan is larger. At High Island you can see trans-gulf migrants, but youll miss both West Indian-Florida migrants and the circum-gulf migrants that travel up through south Texas.

At Lake Erie all routes converge. Ive personally tallied thirty-three species of warbler in a day at Point Pelee, and my companion Bob Brackett, from Ottawa, has seen thirty-four. Its certainly no accident that Ive come back to this great site every year since and did most of my field research for Warblers (Houghton-Mifflin, 1997) around Lake Erie.

Though Pelee is the most renowned place for spring migration, other hot spots, such as Long Point, Ontario; Presque Isle State Park, Pennsylvania; and Crane Creek State Park in Ohio are also superior places to bird. The boardwalk at Magee Marsh Wildlife Area next to Crane Creek can rival the numbers of migrants seen at Pelee. Many prefer this boardwalk, since views of birds are usually better and not so dependent on weather conditions you can consistently find good numbers on most days. Workers at the bird observatory at Ontarios Long Point have gathered massive scientific data over a long period at that site and have noted many great rarities, such as black-capped vireo, varied bunting, and hooded oriole.

The spring migration keeps on well into June for some species, but in July interest transfers to shorebirds movements southward. Depending on Eries water levels, this can be exciting too. Most are species birders expect, such as pectoral sandpiper, Earths champion long-distance traveler. However, rarities like snowy plover, curlew sandpiper, and ruff sometimes turn up as well.

Pointe Mouillee, south of Detroit in Michigan, is probably the best place to see shorebirds around Lake Erie now. Metzger Marsh Wildlife Area east of Toledo, Ohio, was once superb as well. Here hundreds of long-billed dowitchers, scarce elsewhere in the Midwest, were discovered in the early 1990s. I counted nearly 500 on several occasions. Unfortunately, Ducks Unlimited, backed by government agencies, rebuilt a dike across the marsh to boost use by waterfowl. Phragmites grass soon took over the area, which is now greatly degraded and useless for shorebirds. Even those responsible for this ecological disaster dont yet know how to repair the damage.

As summer turns to fall, passerines move south in great numbers. Small flocks of snow buntings arrive around the lakes edge by the end of October, and in some years snowy owls and flocks of redpolls also appear. In November thousands of red-breasted mergansers and Bonapartes gulls stage along the shore. Birders can usually find one or more little gulls and the odd black-legged kittiwake by carefully searching through the Bonapartes. They may also see something rarer, like a black-headed or Rosss gull. As the lake ices in, most of the small gulls leave Lake Erie and migrate to the mid-Atlantic coast; larger species like herring, lesser black-backed, and the white-winged gulls (glaucous, Iceland, and Thayers) replace them.

Niagara River Gorge is the most exhilarating gull-watching spot in North America, with thousands of gulls massing just above and below the falls. Observers have recorded nineteen species there. The staff at Birders Journal hosted a gull conference at Niagara this past Novemberover 200 gull enthusiasts attended from as far away as the Netherlands and Sweden. Who says nobody bothers to look at gulls?

There is, of course, much more to say about the bird life of Lake Erie, especially the tremendous passage of hawks and other raptors at points along the north shore in fall. In remnant patches of Ontarios Carolinian forest, several songbirds reach the northern edge of their breeding ranges; both breeding and winter ranges have changed a great deal around the lake in the past two centuries, an absorbing story of its own.