As a late minute plan, Misty and I decided to attend the Biggest Week in American Birding in northern Ohio. It is sponsored by Black Swamp Bird Observatory and includes many wildlife and refuges around northern Ohio. The main spot, however, is Magee Marsh Wildlife Refuge which sits right on Lake Erie. It is the last fuel stop for the migrating birds reading for the flight over the lakes and into Canada. Because of this they call themselves the Warbler Capital of the World.
It was our second time visiting the area. The first time, several years ago, Magee Marsh was closed down for maintenance and as such we didn’t get to walk the famed boardwalk. It also wasn’t during spring migration so the birding was underwhelming. This time we spent two weeks here specifically for birding arriving a week before the festival started. The first week the birds hadn’t really started arriving yet so the birding was slow. The middle of the festival week, however, things picked up tremendously and the birding was very good. While we only managed an average of 45 species a day, my overall species count for our time here was 115 which I consider pretty good.
I got several lifers while here which included: Black-throated Blue Warbler, Eastern Whip-poor-will and the awesome Northern Saw-whet Owl. This put my total life list at 501 (not including naturalized birds).
Overall it was a fun experience but we were a little underwhelmed by the festival itself. You do not need to pay for it in order the bird here of course, but we wanted to experience it. We didn’t feel it was worth the money as most all of the good presentations were already full and all of the tours were full as well. We attended the opening night and the showing of the film Listers. We had seen it before but watching it with a room full of fellow birders was fun. The guys who filmed it were also there and signed their book for us after the movie. That was fun.
Anyway, here are the photos I managed while there. Obviously not inclusive to all we saw, but these were the highlights for sure. Love some warblers!
