A Very Cleveland Thanksgiving
My mom and I went up to Cleveland to visit my sister and her boyfriend for Thanksgiving and get a little birding in. We went up in hopes that we could find a snowy owl that was spotted nearby the previous year, but if you’ve learned anything by reading these posts by now you know I didn’t see the snowy owl… and like always, that’s okay! I started the trip at 268 and was excited for whatever species I would see. Our first day, Kaley and Aaron took us out to Mentor Marsh and Headlands Beach. My favorite thing about going to the first trail in a new region is the incredibly high probability that I’ll find a few lifers. A flock of tundra swans flying over and the dozens of tree sparrows scratched that itch and we continued on to the next location. As we made our way down to the beach, we spotted people with a digiscope. Before I knew it my mom had spoken to them and gotten the intel; about 50 snow buntings just landed on the beach in the direction we were headed. We walked as far as we could and stopped at the edge of the marked of nesting site for plovers and waited. The salty gusts of Lake Erie smacked me in the face as I waited for movement. A large wave hit the shore and all of a sudden the flock of buntings took flight. They circled a few times as we tried to count as many as we could until they landed and disappeared again. Looking back at photos we were able to count about 48 making that and the white throated sparrow we saw on the way back to the car number 272. We finished with a stop at my favorite burger joint, Swenson’s, making it a very Cleveland day.
Over the next couple of days we went to Shaker Lakes Nature Center, Wendy Park, Cleveland Lakefront Preserve, and Chagrin Nature Center. We saw hundreds of red-breasted mergansers flying in groups, a pond filled of mallards, hundreds of gulls coming in with a ship, and I finally saw a hairy woodpecker. We saw the first hairy at Cleveland Lakefront, but then we saw one on the same tree as a downy woodpecker at Chagrin and that made it very easy to confirm. I also got faked out by a yellow-rumped warbler that I chased around in the snow for about 40 minutes convinced it was something incredibly rare. Overall it was another great trip on the books. I left Cleveland at 277 species and was ready to continue inching closer to 300… just in much warmer weather.
