Pelagic Birding comes to Lake Erie

  • By Bruce Glick
  • November 9, 2011
  • 273
                        
Pelagic Birding comes to Lake Erie Columnist Bruce Glick summarizes happenings in the local birding world. This week Bruce reports on his first pelagic trip on Lake Erie. Find out more in the "Gone Birding" column. The word pelagic refers to oceans, and birders have long used the term with reference to birding trips taken off both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The best known trips leave Monterrey, California and Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Only recently have Ohio birders taken this concept and applied it to Lake Erie. This fall, Jennifer Brumfield organized three trips out of Vermilion and the Black Swamp Birding group is running several trips out of Cleveland. All of the trips have been sold out, showing that interest is running high for this new type of birding adventure. Twenty-two of us boarded a fishing boat at 8:00 in the morning on November 5 and headed out to see what we could find. The water was choppy but not bad enough to cancel the trip. As expected for November, it was cold in the morning but everyone was dressed for winter. There were lots of the common gulls but someone soon picked out a Forester's Tern and then a small flock of Snow Buntings. Ben Warner's job was to do the "chumming". This involved tossing stale popcorn and other "goodies" off the stern of the boat. The gulls know the routine and followed the boat most of the day, picking up every morsel as soon as it hit the water. The idea of chumming is that the crowd of gulls will attract the rarer seabirds, especially the jaegers. The main goal of the trip is to find jaegers and possibly a rare gull or two. Sure enough after an hour or so, Jen yelled, "jaeger at 3:00" and everyone turned their attention to the right side of the boat where a sleek, dark, gull-like bird was chasing gulls and even a Horned Grebe. These pirates of the seas are fast and fierce. This first one was a Parasitic Jaeger and it gave us some excellent looks before leaving the slow-moving boat behind. At one point someone pointed out that a Lesser Black-backed Gull had joined the crowd of gulls following the boat. It stayed with us for quite awhile, giving everyone close views of an unusual gull. There were also lots of Bonaparte's Gulls, small birds that are beautiful to watch. Common Loons and Red-breasted Mergansers were seen throughout the day. Our route took us east to the Lorain harbor. In the harbor we cruised by the breakwalls looking for an early season Purple Sandpiper but only found a lone Spotted Sandpiper. The calm water gave everyone a chance to eat some of the sandwiches and snacks provided by the trip leaders. Then it was back out into the lake and this time we headed out as far as 10 miles offshore which felt like being in the Atlantic. There we encountered two more jaegers, both Pomarines. The second bird gave us a memorable show, staying around the boat for several miles and providing what Jen said was the best jaeger show she had ever witnessed. When that bird finally left us, everyone felt that the day had been a resounding success. Pelagic birding is here to stay in Ohio. Bruce Glick birderbruce@yahoo.com 330-317-7798


Loading next article...

End of content

No more pages to load