2002 Lake Erie Wing Watch Weekend 4-12 to 4-14 Deb and I attended the wing watch program over the weekend. It was very enjoyable. The two people that produced the "Watching Warblers" and "Watching Waders" videos, Mike and Judy, were the main speakers Friday night. They had a video presentation showing what they go through to get the bird shots. Since they now record the audio in digital format, they showed some interesting tricks that can be done with slowing down the sound and the video while a bird sings. They are currently producing videos called "Watching Sparrows" and "Watching Western Warblers" which should be available at the end of the year.

Saturday, Deb and I attended birding class sessions all day. Every hour a new one would start and they were 50 minutes long. There were multiple sessions going on at the same time, so we had to choose the ones most interesting to us. We attended Julie Shieldcastle's session on "Warbler ID". Then we sat in on Vic's excellent "Advanced Warbler ID" class. We ate lunch at the Oak Harbor High School where everything was occurring. The first afternoon session we attended was done by Judy and Mike and it was called "Watching Waders". Next was a session called "Birding Hotspots" and then the final session was on "Grassland Birds" which was very good.

There were a lot of booths setup for the various marshes and wildlife areas, a couple of artists, an author, and an optics vendor. So there was plenty to look at it when not in the class sessions. The "Back To the Wild" rehab people were there with several birds including: red-tailed hawk, Am. kestrel, barred, great-horned, sawhet, screech, barn, and short-eared owls.

Friday evening before Mike and Judy spoke, they served us deli sandwiches, fruit, veggies, cookies, and sport drink. We went to a really nice arboretum in Elmore early Saturday morning. We went on an owl walk Saturday evening at Ottawa, but we did not see the great-horned owls that are nesting behind the office. Deb and I heard a screech owl when we arrived at Ottawa. On Sunday morning there was a guided bird trip to Magee. Mike and Judy were there. They started at the nature center, but Deb and I started at the boardwalk so we didn't see them until we were leaving.

All this activity for the grand total price of 10 bucks per person. Friday afternoon Deb was in the nature center at Magee and some old guy was complaining about how the price had gone up. This was not 10 dollars per day but 10 dollars for the weekend. At the same time Deb was in the nature center listening to this old fart bitch, I was on the tower hearing a similar complaint from another birder. Since this was my first Wing Watch I couldn't say anything, but now after attending one, Deb and I can both say this was worth more than 10 dollars per person and we cannot understand how anyone could complain about the price.

As for birding, Friday morning was the best. It was one of my best days at Magee for numbers and without a doubt, my best day at Magee in early spring. Thursday night was the warmest night of the spring in Toledo. The temperatures remained above 55 degrees the entire night which should have made for a good push of song birds. Deb and I arrived at the boardwalk at 10:00 A.M. It was raining and it rained for the next two hours, sometimes quite hard, but that didn't bother the birding. There were hundreds of ruddy ducks near the shoreline. We birded the boardwalk for three hours and the highlights were:

over 100 hermit thrushes,
several dozen sightings for each of the following: white-throated sparrow, yellow-rumped warbler, and ruby and golden-crowned kinglet,
at least 25 winter wrens and about that many eastern towhees,
several fox, swamp, and song sparrows and blue-gray knatcatchers,
sevaral chipping sparrows in the parking lot,
a lone black-and-white warbler, some juncos, and a few field and tree sparrows.

Birds seemed to be crawling everywhere. It was a great day for someone like Deb who does not have a lot of experience. We took a break and came back later in the afternoon for another 90 minutes, and the numbers were already less. On Sunday morning we birded for two hours, and we saw only a few of hermit thrushes, no towhees, and a few winter wrens. The numbers for the yellow-rumped warbler and the kinglets were also lower. Friday morning was just one of those lucky days where we were there at the right time. With all the rain on Friday morning, Deb and I hardly saw another birder until later in the day when it was dry. It was getting crowded Sunday morning.

We stayed at the Oak Harbor Hotel Friday night and Saturday night. It's an old building with 10-12 foot ceilings in the rooms. The bed was too soft. The bathtub was old-fashioned with the high sides. We ate greasy yellow perch for dinner at the hotel Friday night before going to the Wing Watch where they were serving free deli sandwiches. If we knew that we wouldn't have spent 25 dollars on dinner. Satuday night we ate pizza at one of the downtown pizza places. It was good. After birding on Sunday, we stopped at the Freeway Diner in Oregon for lunch. We both got breakfast meals. I had the usual corn-beef hash which is excellent. We had a lot of fun.

We saw several birds driving on lickert-harder road to Ottawa Saturday evening . The total species list for the weekend included: pied-billed grebe, double-crested cormorant, great blue heron, great egret, canada goose, mallard, gadwall, blue-winged teal, northern shoveler, wood duck, ring-necked duck, one of the scaups, ruddy duck, turkey vulture, cooper's hawk, red-tailed hawk, bald eagle, American kestrel, American coot, killdeer, herring gull, ring-billed gull, mourning dove, rock dove, eastern screech owl, belted kingfisher, northern flicker, red-bellied woodpecker, yellow-bellied sapsucker, downy woodpecker, eastern phoebe, horned lark, tree swallow, blue jay, American crow, brown creeper, house wren, winter wren, carolina wren, brown thrasher, American robin, hermit thrush, eastern bluebird, blue-gray gnatcatcher, golden-crowned kinglet, ruby-crowned kinglet, European starling, black-and-white warbler, yellow-rumped warbler, red-winged blackbird, rusty blackbird, common grackle, brown-headed cowbird, northern cardinal, eastern towhee, dark-eyed junco, American tree sparrow, chipping sparrow, field sparrow, white-throated sparrow, fox sparrow, swamp sparrow, song sparrow, house finch, American goldfinch, and house sparrow.