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Date Posted: 16:58:18 03/19/03 Wed
Author: Chuck
Author Host/IP: dial-bu-185-069.wcnet.org / 157.134.185.69
Subject: More Longspur info - Vic Fazio
In reply to: Chuck 's message, "Sunday - big movements - 1000's Longspurs, Goshawk, Cranes" on 10:32:09 03/18/03 Tue

More details on the Longspur migration from Vic Fazio:

On 21 March 1997, I found myself at the
easternmost end of Maumee Bay State
Park where it borders Mallard Club Marsh Wildlife
Area. I was curious as to whether Maumee Bay
may offer a site where I could record passage
migration of diurnal songbirds akin to what I had
spent 7 years doing at various bird
observatories around the Great Lakes, especially
the more than 3000 hrs logged at Long Point
Bird Observatory. I had, with minimal luck, tried
the previous couple of spring seasons the vicinity
of Magee marsh and now thought to try farther
west. I was there at sunrise, and very shortly after,
began to notice a flight involving the Lapland
Longspur of a magnitude I had not seen before.
By 9:00 am I had counted in excess of 1500
birds. Curious as to whether this was a broad-front
migration, I left my post at that time driving inland
as far as Bono (Rt. 2) checking along the way for
overflights. None were detected. Now believing the
flight to be largely a shoreline phenomenon, I
returned to Maumee Bay only to opt for my
alternate site, the sledding hill at the western end
of the state park for the better view of the beach it afforded.
It was now about 9:30 and I
found Bruce Glick and a host of Amish birders
occupying the mound. They had arrived at 9:00
and picked up where I had left off, noting immediately
the heavy longspur flight. Together we proceeded to
count birds which were moving along the beach, overhead,
and along the southern perimeter of the state park,
different individuals focused on different flight paths.
I suspect few longspurs got by us. The flight died
dramatically around 12:30 pm. and the total was
an incredulous 4270. Later, in The Ohio Cardinal
I published it simply as 4200+, and the record appears as such
in Peterjohn 2001 Birds Of Ohio, right after Lou Campbell's
amazing 10,000 on 1 May 1949 - also in Lucas Co.

[unfortunately, only Bruce Glick's portion of this flight
was published by Brock in North American Birds and so
following that source, the new Birds of the Toledo region
only lists the record as 2700 birds.]

Ever since the 1997 flight, I have been trying to hit the
right conditions for another big flight. The largest flight I
have recorded since that time was 2100 over Maumee
Bay State Park 27 Feb. 2000.

[Peterjohn's listing of 1800 from Magee Marsh 11 April 1996
actually references my observation of birds departing Killdeer
Plains Wildlife Area - See The Ohio Cardinal. This is an
important distinction as the Lake Erie flight in February
and March seems to be independent of the Wyandot/
Marion Co. concentrations which develop in late March
and early April. I have previously published my thoughts
on what may be behind that particular phenomenon -
see Ohio Birds & Natural History Vol 2(4) page 185.]

This Sunday, I anticipated good conditions for another
longspur flight but in my prediction to Jason Estep on
Saturday I subdued my expectations. Jason will
recall that I mentioned that the longspur, as a rule, is
a bird of the mid-morning, with few in passage before
8:30 and with a distinct peak around 9:00-9:30. The
exception to that rule was 21 March 1997 when birds
were on the move by 7:15 am although the peak still came
in the 9 O'clock hr.

Therefore, when a pair of longspurs called overhead in the
fog at 7:26 this past Sunday, I began thinking uh-oh.
As related in the previous posting on the flight at Maumee
Bay State Park, visibility was such that I did not
begin my formal counts until 8:00 am. Up to that point,
I counted 43 Lapland Longspurs, the few I could hear
and see immediately overhead. Even up to 9:00 whatever
portion of the flight was along the beach was largely
obscured. With that in mind, here are the numbers of
Lapland Longspurs counted within each 30 minute period.

to 8:00 am = 43
to 8:30 am = 676
to 9:00 am = 1105
to 9:30 am = 2170 (the first 15 minutes saw 1200 birds)
to 10:00 am = 970
to 10:30 am = 620
to 11:00 am = 410
to 11:30 am = 970*
to 12:00 pm = 540

and at noon I quit. A box of girl scout cookies can only
take one so far and I had to get some lunch. Besides,
I was very interested in whether anyone at Magee Marsh
was detecting any of the flight so I stopped by there
only to find the species unrecorded. I did learn that at the
top of the 9 o'clock hour, Mark Shieldcastle had witnessed
in excess of 1500 longspurs departing the beach at Magee
Marsh.

I returned to the Hill at Maumee Bay to find Jay & Marlene
Farkas but their concentration was on the substantial
vulture/hawk show developing at that time. Only a single
flock of 18 went over at 2 pm, and then 6 birds near 4 pm.
In all likelihood the flight died shortly after noon and the
total (rounded down) of 7400 birds is a reasonably
conservative estimate of the passage of birds through
the area Sunday morning. I do note further corroboration
of this flight in the numbers posted by Chuck Anderson
on the website for the Rare Bird Alert of the Toledo
Naturlists Association. From Otsego Park, on the Maumee
River Chuck counted 3,613 birds, and this is where things get
really interesting, he started counting at NOON! Chuck
offered this supposition in his posting . . .

"All the groups were moving Southwest along the River. I
presume they had hit the Lake and were trying to fly West
around it, and then just continued along the River southwest."

I'm thinking Chuck is right on the money - but is this the norm?
Would they have normally gone around the lake, perhaps
shot across at Bayshore? Just where they go is as much a
mystery as what happens to the Erie Metropark hawks
after they leave Michigan in the fall.

You will note in the above numbers an increase at the 11:00
hour. This is when much of the sky had cleared, a SSW'ly
breeze was felt, and generally the warmup on the day had
begun. Noting the drop-off in numbers leading up to 11:00
I was expecting only a couple of hundred birds to round
out the bell shape curve the species has followed in previous
observations. After a bit of a lull, hoards started coming out of
the south (rather than exclusively from the east paralleling the
shoreline). Upon reaching the hill, birds would re-orient slightly
westward affording great ease of counting, but begging
questions anew as to where did these birds come from. A
mid-morning peak suggests staging somewhere to the south.
Assuming a sunrise departure (as I witnessed at Killdeer Plains),
and perhaps a 30 mph ground speed, these birds may be staging
in agricultural lands 60-75 miles away. Alternatively, these birds
skip along the Lake Erie shoreline are do not originate all that
far away. But your guess is as good as mine. Just another example
of how little we know about birds in Ohio.

As is the norm, the longspurs were accompanied by a few,
but really a very few Horned Larks (200) and American
Pipits (21).

Other terrestrial species of interest on the day. . .

Tree Swallow - 57

surprisingly few American Robins, Eastern Bluebirds, and
blackbirds which I largely ignored with so much else
going on.

I failed to mention a flyby Greater Yellowlegs in the earlier
post. In all, 60 species were censused from The Hill at
Maumee Bay State Park Sunday 16 March 2003 during
one of the more remarkable spring migration events
I have had the privilege to witness.

cheers

Vic Fazio
Shaker Hts., OH

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