This year during Biggest Week in American Birding, one of the field trips that I co-led with Ben was a Big Day van trip on May 12th. Starting at 6AM, we had a full 9 hours to bird, leaving from the Maumee Bay State Park Lodge. The only rules, basically, were that we could not visit the Magee Marsh Boardwalk, and we have to be back by 3PM. Our van was full with 10 participants in addition to Ben and myself. As a team, we set some ground rules: 1)Birds had to be seen or heard by at least one guide and at least 3 participants in order to be counted, and 2)We would get birds as quickly as possible unless it was a Life Bird for anyone, then we would try to get the person on their life bird for a decent look.
We started the morning at Oak Openings Metropark where we got our woodpeckers out of the way for the day! Red-headed, Red-bellied, Downy, Hairy, Pileated and Northern Flicker all in under 2 hours! We picked up 11 species of warblers and had a good start on sparrows with Henslow's Sparrow, Lark Sparrow, Chipping, Field, Song, White-crowned and White-throated, along with Eastern Towhee! Unfortunately, we were unable to refind 4 species that we had the previous day: Black Vulture, Wild Turkey, Cerulean Warbler, and Clay-colored Sparrow.
Stop #2 was nearby at the Wilkens Rd and Sager intersection, always a reliable grassland for Grasshopper Sparrow and Eastern Meadowlark, and it didn't disappoint! In addition, we has Blue-winged Warbler and Savannah Sparrow!
Next we drove through Irwin Prairie on our way to Secor Metropark, without even stopping, we added Brown Thrasher, Turkey Vultures and Sandhill Cranes! Secor was good to us. At the entrance, a Louisiana Waterthrush was heard calling, which is fairly unusual for the area! We also added Cooper's and Broad-winged Hawks, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Orange-crowned Warbler, Hooded Warbler, and Wood Thrush!
We saw our only Rock Pigeon of the day en route to Pearson Metropark. We were lucky enough to spot a Sora walking along the edge of some reeds by one of the parking lots. Amazingly all 10 participants were able to SEE a Sora! It was a life bird for most of them! We picked up several more species for the day including Marsh Wrens, Sharp-shinned Hawk, and Northern Parula.
Our next stop was Metzger Marsh where some of our new birds included Cliff Swallow, Caspian Terns, Common Gallinule, Trumpeter Swan, and Pied-billed Grebe! We didn't stay long before we were off to the Krause/Stange Observation Tower of ONWR. We quickly added Dunlin, Eastern Kingbird and Lesser Yellowlegs before piling back into the van and returning to Maumee Bay State Park. By this time, we had already reached 100 species and we had less than 30 minutes remaining. We hurried down the boardwalk behind the nature center in search of a few key birds. A very cooperative Eastern Screech-Owl, Veery, and nesting Purple Martins made 103 possible!
The best part of the day was getting all 10 participants on life birds throughout the day!
There were a few birds throughout the day that Ben and I had that we couldn't get enough other participants on, like Horned Larks and Black-and-white Warbler. After our trip ended, we continued birding and added several more species to our personal day lists, including Osprey, Great Black-backed Gull, Bonaparte's Gulls, Red-breasted Merganser, Wild Turkey, Common Terns, and maybe a few others.
The Big Day van trip, and other field trips we led during Biggest Week were good for scouting out birds for our annual Columbus Audubon Bird-a-thon Big Day that we will be completing this Tuesday, May 16! Our goal is to beat last year's total of 144 species. Our team, the BenAnnaquits, will include my mom, Julie and our friend Dylan from South Africa. If you'd like to donate in our name, visit this link: https://columbusaudubon.org/groups/birdathon/columbus-audubon-birdathon-support/
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