Yesterday I spent some time cruising the roads near the Croton egg farms.
Horned larks were abundant, and I did find one small "flock" of maybe 12
longspurs along Tagg Road. However, the nemesis snow bunting continues to
elude me.
However, as I drove past some sort of drainage ditch, seven mallards rose up
in a flurry, and that got me to thinking about other small wet areas that
might be open and hold waterfowl. So, this afternoon, I set out in search
of waterfowl, with the following results:
The quarries to which I have access were all frozen over.
The Evans Park, off Route 13 north of Newark held some Canadas and mallards,
and a few feral barnyard varieties, but nothing else.
The river above the waterworks low dam, along Horns Hill Road, held more
Canadas, mallards, and one very cold-looking great blue heron. I did stop
at the little church parking lot on Cedar Run Road and study the heronry
which is on the Owens Corning property but viewable from where I stopped. I
was not able to spot any birds there yet.
I hit paydirt however, at a small wetland between Route 16 and the railroad
track just west of the intersection with Route 668 - Brownsville Road. Here
I found:
A pair of hooded mergansers
2 pairs of redheads
A male shoveler
A pair of ring-necked ducks
Several Canadas
A belted kingfisher!
I then drove some of the back roads that more or less follow the river,
without much success. However, in one of the large overhead flights of
Canadas, a single white-phase snow goose stood out.
Later I decided to brave the ice and take my "birding dog" for some exercise
along the Black Hand Gorge bike trail, western end. It turned out to be
about the unbirdiest I have ever seen along that trail, with two rather
startling exceptions:
At the big bend in the river, which some of us now refer to as the eagle
pool, there was a single male lesser scaup and a single male ruddy duck.
Speaking of eagles, from the trail, I was able to see both the male and the
female near the nest, although neither was actually on the nest. They were
right beside each other on a sturdy limb, a few feet from the actual nest.
I also spotted my first sharp-shinned hawk of the year near the east
entrance to Black Hand Gorge, as well as an expected brown creeper.
All in all, not a bad weekend of birding, for February, even though I
whiffed on woodpeckers and kinglets.
Margaret Bowman
Licking Co., OH
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