Sunday, April 25, 2010

Louisiana Waterthrush (lifer #303)


My family was in Ohio on Friday and we were able to stop by the South Chagrin Reservation which is south of Cleveland. I wasn't able to find out anything about it on the Ohio Ornithological Society's website so I got the impression that it is not considered a very good park for birding. I was rather surprised to find the park very hilly with many clear, rocky streams as I don't associate this kind of habitat with Ohio. The species variety was not very high, I only found a little under twenty but I found four Louisiana Waterthrushes chipping and singing while chasing each other around. Later three of the waterthrushes left leaving only one that I was able to get some pictures of.
At first it was singing in a tree but then it flew down into the stream where it was foraging a little over ten feet away from me.
I was also surprised to find singing Dark-eyed Juncos, I figured that the ones in Ohio would have headed north by now. While I didn't find many other birds, I did find some other interesting wildlife. There were many Redback Salamanders under the logs and I found some interesting stuff in the streams.
I think that this fish might be a southern redbelly dace but I could be wrong. It had a little patch of the stream that it was guarding and chasing all of the other minnows away from.
This is a perloided Stonefly larva, I'm not sure exactly which species it is but I have had one
person who suggested that it might be Clioperla clio. Unfortunately I have not been able to find any photos of this species.
Here is a picture of one of the waterfalls to give an idea of what the park looked like.
Here in Michigan, I found a few new arrivals this weekend. At the American Center Marsh on Saturday I saw my first Double-crested Cormorant of the year (I'm not quite sure how it took me so long to see one) and heard my first Virginia Rail of the year. The highlight for me though was the Vesper Sparrow in the vacant lot north of the marsh. It was the first one I have seen at the marsh and this spring was probably the last chance I had to see one there as they are building a new building there. Today I went to Robert Long and Indian Springs Metropark. At Robert Long I saw a pair of Blue-winged teal and a Caspian Tern. At Indian Springs I saw another Vesper Sparrow, two Brown Creepers, several Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, and I heard and saw one Louisiana Waterthrush and possibly heard another. All things considered, it was not a bad day for late April, I had several new park birds and the Louisiana Waterthrush was new for the state.

2 comments:

  1. Congrats for the louisiana waterthrush!!!!!!!

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  2. James - I'm always glad to know what you're seeing and where. Thanks for posting all the non-bird pics, too. Glad to learn about those. In case you haven't found it yet, when you have insects you wonder about you can post pics at Bug Guide http://bugguide.net/node/view/15740 and often someone will help out with the ID.

    Jeff Moore

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