magnolia warbler

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Spring into Summer

The Spring field trip season was hopping with onsite visitors and road trips to offsite presentations. Matt Hanneman, Cubmaster for the Glandorf Cub Scout Pack 229, brought his troop to earn their hiking badge on April 11. Recent flooding resulted in sightings of displaced shrews and hungry Great Horned Owl calls. Continental Elementary School third grade students arrived on May 12, most for the first time. They traveled by yellow bus across Putnam County at the urging of Charlene Finch. Charlene and her Continental Junior Gardeners were some of our first visitors after The Quarry Farm became official. We took The Quarry Farm on the road on May 15, or at least a snapshot thereof. Miller City-New Cleveland School rounded out their elementary program year with the theme “School is Wild” and we visited, along with Estella the Virginia Opossum and Amur honeysuckle hiking sticks finished by Deb Weston for each teacher.

The May 20 Spring Migration Bird Hike resulted in 44 species observed in the nature preserve, including the addition of a Mourning Warbler to our eBird.org list of species. The days leading up to the hike were full of song, although the early spring foliage gave the birds plenty of places to hide. It’s a good thing that David Smith speaks bird. David and Deb Weston recorded 56 species the day before the hike. Eleven were migrating warblers.

For the first time we shared space with Into the Wild LGBTQIA+ at the Findlay Pride Resource Fair on June 3. We removed invasive honeysuckle the day before and used all 50 trunks to make hiking sticks there at Riverside Park.

Putnam County Educational Service Center scheduled a summer camp geared toward Grades 5–8 here on June 6. Campers made hiking sticks and discussed aquatic insect adaptations before wading into Cranberry Run and the quarry to look for the insects, fish, mollusks and crustaceans that live there.

On June 17, the pavilion was set for a tea-tasting led by Kathleen Heeter. Her presentation included a rich, flavorful history of tea and tea culture. Participants tasted four curated loose leaf teas, each paired with a selection of freshly baked items from Kathleen’s menu. Attendees also shared a display of their own tea pots and tea cups.

Last fall, Cub Scout Pack 324 conducted their annual cake auction at Findlay Zion United Methodist Church. They donated the proceeds from the auction to support the work that we do here. On June 28, over a dozen pack members hiked The Quarry Farm trails to earn a badge and visited the farm animal sanctuary residents.

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birds and burr-d

The birding team of David Smith and Deb Weston are stepping up their Quarry Farm game again in anticipation of fall migration. As we watered and fed the farm animal sanctuary residents, Deb’s car passed the front gate sometime around 7 this morning. Shortly thereafter, a large heron-ish bird flew up from the nature preserve and overhead. To say that it flapped its great wings in its journey southwest just doesn’t sound like the correct adverb for such a graceful movement.

Stick-tights hitched a ride with Birder David.

“So jazzed to see the Great Egret,” texted Deb from the trails. She said that David and his wife Julie have seen them in Putnam County. “But it was super cool to see it in the quarry actively hunting—until it saw us.”

There was a Great Blue Heron stalking the quarry wetland, not far from the egret, and one lone female Wood Duck.  They heard but didn’t see the Red-breasted Nuthatch and were pretty certain that they saw an Ovenbird but neither of them felt confident enough to add it to today’s ebird list. Today’s list also included nine warblers: Black and White, Tennessee, Nashville, Common Yellowthroat, American Redstart, Northern Parula, Magnolia, Bay-breasted and Blackburnian.  

“Our record for fall from last year is 42 and that’s what we got today,” Deb added.  

The Quarry Farm tally on ebird is now at 138 species.

As Deb waits in the leafy shadows for landing birds, she trains her hefty camera on insects. Gerald O. Coburn would be thrilled. He photographed and documented most of the dragonfly and butterfly species noted here, as well as many birds. Deb told me last week that she would have really liked my dad. I told her that I think the admiration would be mutual. Dad would have seen her car pass by his own driveway, fired up his ATV and firmly directed her to grab her camera and hop on, wasting no time to see everything that sought warmth and breakfast with the sunrise.

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Spring Bird Migration Hike 2021

Tracking American Redstarts in the upland forest on May 15, 2021

Mary Poppins had a bird woman who drew birds in with feed. Cartoonist Gary Larson sketched a before-and-after of Screen 1) pigeons swooping in and leaving Screen 2) a pile of empty rags topped with a hat and a few tuppence.

The Quarry Farm has a bird woman named Deb. She doesn’t need no stinkin’ feed and l’m pretty sure she doesn’t deal in tuppence. She told me last week that she has plenty of patience and enough Advil to watch and wait for the birds to show themselves. As we stood on the curve of Cranberry Run, I asked her what bird was calling above. It was a Baltimore Oriole. I asked for another audio I.D. a couple of minutes later.

“It’s a Baltimore Oriole,” she replied without so much as a sigh. Apparently Deb has enough Advil to deal with hopeless birders like me, too.

Deb introduced The Quarry Farm to someone who speaks bird even better than she does. When David Smith tunes his ears to birdsong in the floodplain, a thrush becomes not just one thrush but both a Swainson’s Thrush and a Wood Thrush. All the yellowish bird shapes silhouetted against the sky become a variety of migrating warbler species.

Thanks to Deb and David, this year’s Spring bird hike checklist is whole lot longer than those of past years. They looked at their previous records and chose the 2021 date. This morning was clear, floodwaters from earlier in the week had shrunk to a couple of vernal pools, and 14 birders walked the trails to record 44 species. Most of these birds are just passing through, but not before Deb could take their picture.

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Deb and David and the Giant Avian Adventure

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Quarry Farm Nature Preserve and Conservation Farm
May 20, 2020
8:44 AM
Traveling
2.77 miles
281 Minutes
All birds reported? Yes
Comments: Submitted from eBird for iOS, version 2.0.13 Build 2.0.122

2 Canada Goose
1 Mallard
2 Mourning Dove
1 Common Nighthawk
1 Ruby-throated Hummingbird
2 Great Blue Heron
4 Turkey Vulture
1 Cooper’s Hawk
1 Red-tailed Hawk
1 Red-headed Woodpecker
2 Red-bellied Woodpecker
1 Downy Woodpecker
1 Northern Flicker
1 Willow Flycatcher
1 Least Flycatcher
1 Eastern Phoebe
1 Great Crested Flycatcher
1 Philadelphia Vireo
1 Warbling Vireo
2 Red-eyed Vireo
4 Blue Jay
1 Carolina Chickadee
1 Barn Swallow
2 White-breasted Nuthatch
4 Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
4 House Wren
4 Gray Catbird
3 Swainson’s Thrush
2 Wood Thrush
4 American Robin
1 American Goldfinch
1 Chipping Sparrow
1 Field Sparrow
1 Song Sparrow
1 Orchard Oriole
1 Baltimore Oriole
2 Brown-headed Cowbird
2 Common Grackle
1 Golden-winged Warbler
2 Black-and-white Warbler
2 Tennessee Warbler
1 Nashville Warbler
2 Common Yellowthroat
6 American Redstart
1 Cape May Warbler
1 Northern Parula
2 Magnolia Warbler
1 Blackburnian Warbler
1 Yellow Warbler
1 Chestnut-sided Warbler
1 Blackpoll Warbler
3 Scarlet Tanager
2 Northern Cardinal
1 Rose-breasted Grosbeak
3 Indigo Bunting

Note: An additional sighting, a Gray-cheeked Thrush, was confirmed this evening, bringing today’s birding boo-yah! to 56 species.