Ohio Birds and Biodiversity

I should have had this out on the wire a while back, but better late than never.

The 17th annual Lake Erie Wing Watch will be held this Saturday, in Port Clinton, Ohio. Hard on the shores of Lake Erie, this is the self-proclaimed Walleye Capital of the World. But it's also a great area for birds, and as an attendee, you'll be a mere stone's toss from the Buckeye State's great cradle of wetland biodiversity, the vast marshes of western Lake Erie.

But wait. There is more. Saturday features a star-studded cast of speakers, or at least a constellation of flickering flames headed by a genuine celeb of the bird world: Mr. Chuck Hagner, editor-in-chief of Birder's World magazine. You won't want to miss Chuck's talk, as the protagonist is a bird named for an Ohio town: that rarity of rarities, the Kirtland's Warbler.

But wait. There is more yet. Other speakers include Tom Hissong on bird song; Mark Witt on waterfowl; Sharon Cummings on photography; Jen Brumfield on how NOT to bird; Mark Shieldcastle on songbird migration; and Larry Richardson on warbler ID. And since it's my blog, I can save me for last - I get to talk about those bloodthirsty winged killers, those avian scud missiles, those feathered guerillas: RAPTORS!

For the complete skinny, just go ahead and click this right here.

I saw a Sharp-shinned Hawk the other day, tracing lazy, languid circles high in the sky. A migrant, the "sharpie" was off to parts north, and this is about as placid as you'll ever see one of these birds behaving.

This got me thinking about "Sky Watch Friday". A lovely bit of goodness, this site allows photographers to post beautiful images of fluffy clouds, tantalizing sunsets, and other awe-inspiring views of the ether.

Very nice.

But there are winged savages up there in the sky, like the above Sharp-shinned Hawk. If these feathered balls of testosterone were the size of Trumpeter Swans, we'd all be dead. They'd run us down, pluck off our extremities, and feast on our innards. The sharpie is a fitting subject for Psychotic Homicidal Beast Friday, a blogger's tribute to the week's end that is very unlikely to catch on.

Sharp-shinneds like to attack things. They seem to be utterly devoid of fear. In migration, they'll routinely strafe larger, more sluggish and mellower co-migrants like Red-tailed Hawks, just for kicks, apparently. Yes, if these boys were human, they'd be stored in rubber rooms and fed through slots.


All of the Accipiter tribe are hostile. These are the bird hawks, equipped with long rudderlike tails to facilitate quick jigs and jags, and short rounded wings, the better to accelerate in fast bursts and get through dense thickets. No songbird is safe with lurking accipters nearby.

The above silhouette is a cardinal's Grim Reaper come to life; the spector of death for small birds. A Cooper's Hawk, the bigger relative of the sharpies and every bit as aggressive. They are like Mike Tyson, Wayne Gretzky, and Ghengis Khan rolled into one: savage aggression, suberb agility, and cunning warrior skills. I have seen coops go so far as to run on foot into shrubby thickets where songbirds cowered and the vegetation was too dense to fly into. That'd be like your worst dream come true, if you were the House Sparrow in the shrub.