Hi Rob -

Thanks, and good to hear from you. I just didn't communicate well enough
prior to our trip to get things lined out. But, on the other hand,
travelling without an itinerary is sometimes a lot more fun than with one!
We hadn't even known about the music in Lancaster until we got there!!!
What a great surprise.

I didn't get much time in the Clear Creek valley - just drove through it
mid-morning en route to Logan & the canoe rentals. I saw that I should have
spent at least a morning birding there, but oh well - it gives me a place to
go when I get back... I was impressed while passing through the Hocking
Hills that there was so much older hardwood and mixed forest standing in
that area, and that the riparian area was in such good shape. I presume
that a day's birding there would have been really productive - even in the
mid-summer of late July.

I fully believe that there were lots of warblers in the woods at Old Man's
Cave and at the Schallenberger Preserve - but my ears were untrained for
Eastern warblers' calls and I wasn't able to sort them out. I feel pretty
comfortable sorting out the few old-growth warblers and vireos of the
Pacific Northwest, but was woefully ignorant of the mid-west biome.
Unfortunately, my views of the flits and flitters of the tree-top birds
tended to not be sufficient to identify (m)any warblers and few of the
vireos and flycatchers! Next time I go East, I'll listen to the CDs of the
Eastern bird calls and songs prior to trying to bird - or, I'll arrange to
go out with some locals... No whip-poor-wills seen, as our evenings found
us trying to get our 7- and 10-year olds to bed so that we could hit it hard
again the next day. Again, next time I'm East, I'll plan my birding life a
little better!

I'll cc this to Tweeters, and hope that some of the 'old-timers' on the list
will remember you and say hi! I'll remember your comment that 'landbirds
are more interesting' in Ohio this winter, when I'm drinking a good stout
coffee while watching the winter water birds, eagles, and hordes of
golden-crowned sparrows from Olympia's Bayview Market deli.... (no ice or
snow to contend with!)
:-)

Best,

Jon. Anderson
Olympia, Washington
festuca at olywa.net

----- Original Message -----
From: Diana H Fowler <dfowler8 at juno.com>
To: <festuca at olywa.net>
Sent: Monday, August 07, 2000 5:34 PM
Subject: Ohio trip


> Hi Jon,
>
> Sorry that we didn't know that you were coming, or I could have given you
> a better idea of the jarring transition you would make. I spent 14 years
> out in Seattle before migrating to central Ohio, and am in the peculiar
> position of having undergone almost the same cultural-biological shift
> that you experienced. A couple of post-mortem notes on your experience
> can't hurt.
>
> 1. If I were at the Lancaster Music Festival, I don't think I would've
> had any time for birding!
>
> 2. How were you able to bird Clear Creek/Hocking Hills area and not hear
> Crested Flycatchers and Black-throated Green Warblers? The Hocking Hills
> have large populations of forest-nesting warblers like BTG, Hooded,
> Kentucky, Redstart, and Worm-eating, as well as a few 'newcomers'
> Magnolias and Blackburnians, that have become recently established. Add
> in the riparian warblers, and you cvan easily find 14-16 species without
> too much effort.
>
> 3. Whip-poor-wills are in lots of areas of the Hocking Hills, including
> Clear Creek. You needed to drive the roads at night.
>
> 4. Thomson's Birding in Ohio, even the second edition, is not always
> useful for where you were, except for his great section on Clear Creek
> (an area he has a personal interest in). Contact with local birders in
> Zanesville and Lancaster would've given you much more current
> information. For instance, the area round the Wilds Nature Park south of
> Zanesville is a recovering strip-mine where the grassland now sports good
> populations of neat grassland birds rare in most parts of the midwest.
>
> 5. A good local birder, Charlie Bombaci, also always plugged Clarks.
> I'll tell him you were there, after he recovers from his double bypass
> :-).
>
> 6. Say hello to the Tweeters group for me; many will probably still have
> some memory of me. Tell them I miss the alcids and seas ducks, but the
> landbirds are more interesting here.
>
> Rob Thorn, Gahanna Ohio