Another exciting season of BSBO Lake Erie Pelagic trips is in the books. These trips never fail to deliver fun and excitement to those adventurous enough to go birding on a boat in the middle of winter. ​ ​Winding down the Cuyahoga River overlooking downtown Cleveland is a thrill all its own, but when you pair that with intrepid birders and expert guides who love educating people about these birds, it delivers a unique and memorable birding experience.

​Speaking of expert guides...

When you invite The Gull Guide author Amar Ayyash to help guide a pelagic, boy does he deliver! (With a major assist from Santa, who hitches a ride on our pelagic  to give his reindeer a rest!)  

What a thrill and an honor to have one of North America's leading gull experts join us on our pelagic trips. With his sharp eye and expertise, we added some really cool gulls to our trip lists, including: 
Great Lakes Gull - (American Herring Gull x Great Black-backed Gull hybrid), Glaucous Gull, Iceland Gull, Iceland Gull (Thayer's), Great Black-backed Gull, and Lesser Black-backed Gull.   
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Order The Gull Guide in the BSBO Online Swamp Shop, HERE! ​

Trip reports:

Saturday, December 13

• Snow showers with a high around 25F with westerly winds 15 to 25 mph.
• Highlights included: Long-tailed Duck (pictured above), Northern Pintail, Iceland Gull, and over 20,000 Red-breasted Merganser!
• Leaving the boat dock, we traveled down the Cuyahoga River into Cleveland Harbor and down the inside of the breakwall. On the way back into the river, we had a beautiful view of a snowy Cleveland skyline.

Sunday, December 14

• High of 20F with winds NW at 25 to 35 mph with a few snow showers and negative wind chill temperatures.
• Highlights included: Great Lakes Gull (American Herring x Great Black-backed Gull hybrid), Glaucous Gull (pictured below), Iceland Gull, Iceland Gull (Thayer's), Great Black-backed Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Black-crowned Night Heron family of four, Peregrine Falcon, and Northern Mockingbird.
• Since the winds were so high, this trip stayed on the Cuyahoga River and traveled to some destinations that we haven't been before including the Great Lakes Shipyard and Towing Company on the old Cuyahoga River and Industrial Valley up the river. This allowed for great, close looks at birds.

Thursday, January 1

• Cloudy skies with a few flurries or snow showers possible and a high of 20°F with westerly winds at 15 to 25 mph.
• Highlights included: Three Black-crowned Night Heron, Iceland Gull, Great Black-backed Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, a good sized flock of Canvasback and Redhead, American Black Duck, Ring-necked Duck, Common Goldeneye, and a Belted Kingfisher.
• Winds were high and wind chills were low, so this trip traveled the Cuyahoga River and the old Cuyahoga River into the Industrial Valley up the river like the December 14 trip. This was a great duck trip with close looks at some diving duck species.

We'd like to thank our guides Amar Ayyash, Tim Jasinski, Alex Eberts, Chuck Slusarczyk, Anthony Rodgers, and Gabe Leidy for their time and expertise, all the birders who braved the cold to join us, and the crew of The Holiday, as well!

*All gulls were chummed with Mazuri diving duck pellets, recommended by wildlife rehabilitators. No bread products were used on our trips. ​

Videos from both trips that were posted on social media can be seen below!

As part of the 126th Audubon Christmas Bird Count, Black Swamp Bird Observatory staff and volunteers ventured forth on a cold, dark morning on Wednesday, December 17, to count as many individual birds and species as possible within a 15-mile diameter circle (divided into six sections) covering Fremont, OH. Handed off to BSBO in 2007 (after some years of inactivity), this marked the 19th Fremont CBC coordinated by the Observatory. *

While birders might not think of Fremont, Ohio as "birding nirvana," there are many great birding sites around the area including Creek Bend Farm, Pickerel Creek Wildlife Area, Wolf Creek Park, and numerous woodlots, state wildlife areas and production units, and grasslands for finding wintering birds.

​This year, 21 counters recorded 28,610 individual birds, represented by 72 species (right at average). Birds recorded were about 16% below the yearly average (34,010). Highlights included seldom-encountered species including:

• Cackling Goose
• Greater White-fronted Goose
• Wild Turkey
• Chipping Sparrow
• Northern Shrike (2)
• Killdeer
• Red-shouldered Hawk
• Turkey Vulture
• Black Vulture
• Red-headed Woodpecker
• Yellow-bellied Sapsucker ​

​Of the 72 species recorded, 22 were observed in all six sections of the count circle. Bald Eagle was by far the highest-recorded raptor, with 108 individuals reported (a new count record) and Downy Woodpecker the number one woodpecker spotted (72). 

There were several notable highs and lows for the count. Sandhill Cranes were counted for the sixth straight year as this species continues to return to the Ohio landscape. As a group, waterfowl numbers were below average. Almost all water bodies were frozen and surely contributed to this drop. Gulls were also way below average, maybe in response to a completely frozen lake and bay. Mourning Dove had its lowest count since 2016. This was the lowest total for American Goldfinch and Black-capped Chickadee since BSBO started organizing the count, a trend that seems to be continuing for the chickadee. It was the fourth straight year that Northern Mockingbird was recorded as the soft winters may be aiding these species in northward expansion. Snow Bunting had its highest count since 2013 as did the Red-breasted Nuthatch. It was a good American Tree Sparrow year as it had its highest count since 2017.

Here's a note from count volunteer Kenn Kaufman on a particularly interesting  encounter this year.

​Blue Jays, like other members of the Corvidae (jays, crows, ravens, magpies), are intelligent, adaptable birds that readily take advantage of novel food sources. On December 17, Kimberly and I were on the Fremont, Ohio, Christmas Bird Count, walking through a wooded park where most of the creek was frozen. Birds were concentrated near one stretch where the creek was open, and there we saw a Blue Jay fly up from the water’s edge, carrying something silvery in its bill. This turned out to be a small fish that we later ID'd as a Gizzard Shad! Blue Jays are certainly not rare birds, but I thought this behavior was interesting enough to be worth sharing.

By Gautam Apte, BSBO's Morning Flight Counter

Following the success of our pilot spring season of visible migration monitoring at the Metzger Marsh Wildlife Area, the fall season was upon us in what felt like no time at all. A season of fall migration counting at the same site held some amount of uncertainty. While we had a general understanding of diurnal migratory movements along this section of lakefront in the springtime, thanks to prior studies and plenty of experienced observers, there were far fewer data on active migrants available for fall, and nobody was quite sure what to expect from the birds or their movements. Luckily for us, there was a great number of birds on the move throughout the season, and the comparison to the spring flight was an excellent addition to our understanding of migratory movements along the Lake Erie shoreline. 

The highlights of the season were too numerous to all be listed out, but a few are listed here. Be sure to check out the photo gallery at the end for some images of these species from the count!
 

• Jaegers were an excellent feature of the count this season, and we were lucky enough to record over two dozen individuals over the course of the season. The majority of these records came in August and September, when most juvenile birds are undertaking their migration from high Arctic breeding grounds to their wintering sites in deep tropical ocean waters. Jaegers prefer deeper offshore waters when they stop over in the Great Lakes and there were only a few historical records from the shallow Western Basin prior to the fall count season, but we’re pleased to report that they do seem to pass through the area in good numbers in the fall – even if they might not stay for long! We recorded both Long-tailed and Parasitic Jaegers this season, although most jaegers were left unidentified – identifying this group can be very tricky, and is often impossible with only distant views. 

 

• Like jaegers, scoters are another arctic-breeding, ocean-wintering group of species that are not often seen in the Western Basin. We were fortunate to record all three species of these chunky sea ducks this season, and it appears these birds may be more common than previously thought in active migration through the region.

 

• We saw some great movements of shorebirds this season, but the most striking feature was the presence of American Golden-Plovers. This species tends to be an uncommon sight at mudflats and elsewhere on the ground in Ohio in the fall but was one of the most abundant shorebirds we observed in active migration, often first detected by their distinctive whistling call notes. Golden-Plovers flew over the count on 28% of survey days this season, and were recorded in all four months of the count, an impressive presence!

 

• In early September, a very unusual falcon appeared over the marsh – a faded white Merlin! Pigment abnormalities are very rare in this species, and it was an exceptionally cool individual. Even more interestingly, this exact same bird had been photographed by a birder in Canada some 140 miles away just two days before it appeared at Metzger Marsh, a great example of migration tracking on an individual scale!

 

• A rare Cave Swallow flew by on November 9th, one of only a small handful of records for Northwest Ohio! This species is known for appearing in the Great Lakes following late-season warm fronts, but most are typically seen further east. This individual was a lone highlight of an otherwise cold, rainy day.

 

• A Golden-winged Warbler that flew by on September 3rd was an excellent addition to the season total, and an uncommon fall record of this declining species.

 

• We saw not one, but two rare Little Gulls this season, both juvenile birds. These are scarce breeding birds in the Great Lakes region and always rare; to see multiple in a single season is very noteworthy!

 

• In the last few days of the count, it was great to see some Tundra Swans arriving back from their Arctic breeding grounds. We’re looking forward to counting this species again when we start back up next spring!