Back in Ohio, June 17 - 21

I arrived in Dayton on June 16 from Anchorage, Alaska with enough daylight left to try some birding.  I received information on this blog about the location of Grasshopper Sparrows, a bird I still need for the year, near Dayton at the Greater Miami Mitigation Bank seen during the first week of May on the Bird-a-thon.  While I had access to the internet on my way back from Alaska, I tried to find this location.  However, it was difficult to impossible, except to note internet articles and notes under photos on Flickr that it was near Sycamore State Park and is closed to the public until a dedication ceremony on June 29, 2012.  Because Sycamore State Park was close to the Dayton Airport, I went there hoping to find suitable habitat or a map of the state park showing where the mitigation bank is located.  I did not succeed in finding the mitigation bank or the Grasshopper Sparrows.  More recently, I did a more thorough internet search and found an address for the location on Little Richmond Road.  I think that I was there but I'm not sure.  While I have been at home I got acquainted with using eBird to find reports and also looked in eBird.  However, there are no reports for Grasshopper Sparrow during May and June of this year at this location.  Such is the life of a year lister trying to find birds. 

I did find Grasshopper Sparrow at Campbell Lakes in the southwest corner of Ohio, by using a recent report on Cincinnati Birds.com.  It was easy.  I found a chipping Grasshopper Sparrow apparently defending nesting territory shortly after arriving on the evening of June 17.

On the evening of June 18, I drove to Shawnee State Forest in southeast Ohio to listen for Whip-poor-wills.  Between 9:41 and 9:44 pm off the right side of the parking lot at the lodge, a Whip-poor-will started calling its name/singing repeatedly as they do, and continued until I left.  I heard another Whip-poor-will also singing at the parking lot at the corner of the entry road to the lodge and Route 125 just before I left the area.

Grasshopper Sparrow and Whip-poor-will raise the year total to 521.  Now I need to get moving on getting breeding species that I missed during migration.  I'll be very busy.  I have had to recover from a very exhausting trip to Alaska.