A Day of Mourning at Crane Creek…(Magee Marsh, Ohio): 14 May 2009

The promise of this day at the Magee Marsh boardwalk was a little less more than the delivery. A good day of warbler activity (standard at this time of the spring at Magee) sure (with a notable rise in females working the boardwalk woods), but not the barnstormer we’d hoped for after the stormy evening before. Of course I did get a personal tally of over 20 wood-warblers, although by this point of the season at Magee it has become abundantly clear that you would have to try pretty hard to NOT see 20-plus warblers in a day there, as they seem to spend so much time dangling within inches of you, daring you to not see them! It was a healthy day for Mourning Warblers with few birders leaving empty-handed, and I managed to see at least two during my daily travels along the boardwalk, guiding and trying to photograph anything that even flinches. By late afternoon birder numbers had dropped and after a ridiculous 15,000 birders were estimated to have visited during the mega-day of the International Migratory Day last Saturday it was strange to sometimes have a boardwalk all to yourself, and a rare moment of birding solitude. The Black-throated Blues showed their appreciation for this too, by picking bugs up off the wooden railings along the Magee boardwalk…