Monday, April 8

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Busy, busy, busy and not for birding.

As part of the 2013 college visit tour we drove to Oxford Ohio to visit Miami University of Ohio. Drove down Thursday, evening then spent Friday doing tours and talking to Zoology faculty.

Kind of a neat school. Founded in 1809 as a school to convert the Miami Indians to what we think is civilization. Can’t understand why the Miami balked at that. It’s not a large school but the campus has a stately feel about it and the school is highly rated academically. The school does seem to have some identity issues with University of Miami. While waiting for the opening monologue they posted trivia questions. Like; which is older, Miami University of Ohio or University of Miami (Hint: Florida was owned by the Spanish in 1809)?

After that we headed over to West Lafayette. The Indiana DNR had an unveiling ceremony at Turkey Run State Park for a couple exhibits that Lise designed. One exhibit was for the landscape architects that worked for the CCC and helped design the parks and one was for the architect that designed several State Park inns. A number of descendants, some in their 80s, were present. The daughter of the inn architect came all the way from Connecticut. She seemed quite pleased with the exhibit honoring her father.

Lise’s exhibits. Gene DeTurk photos.

We have gotten a small amount of birding in. Thursday morning Lise and I made a quick run to Lake Lansing where we both got common loon, eared grebe and pied-billed grebe. Lise also got her Bonaparte’s gull there too. Later we got a brown-headed cowbird in our yard. On the way back from West Lafayette Sunday we stopped at the ever popular Kinderhook sewage treatment plant. I should say, ever popular for some of our family. I got my Northern shoveler for the year and we both got blue-winged teal.

Molly at Kinderhook.

Then a couple hours ago we got our first of the year chipping sparrow at our feeders. That puts me at 107 for the year (42.8%) and Lise at 105 (42.0%), 98 days (26.85%) into the year.

The standing so far.

Bird movement is starting to pick up. Waterfowl migration is in full swing and a number of passerine first of the year sightings are being reported on the listserves. Yesterday there was a report of a long-eared owl at Fenner Nature Center, about five minutes from here. While people were searching for the long-eared owl they found a saw-whet owl. Unfortunately we couldn’t get out looking for either one. Today was kind of ugly both work wise and weather wise and tomorrow is a water polo match, so I think we will miss those two. There have been no recent reports of either one so likely they have both headed north. Anyway, over the next two months we should be able to get 75 – 100 species fairly easily, even taking college visits and water polo into consideration. Then the real work starts.