© Jerry TalkingtonThis upland sandpiper was one of at least four found at an airport in Harrison County last week. The sightings marked welcome returns to Ohio for the long-absent species.
What an odd month this has been for bird comings and goings.
Last week, Jerry Talkington found two whimbrels in a field in Fairport Harbor. The sightings were unprecedented for the date in Northeast Ohio, according to "
The Birds of the Cleveland Region."
Were they late northbound migrants on the way to their Arctic nesting grounds? Or early fall migrants headed south?
At the same time, upland sandpipers -- a grassland species that had all but abandoned Ohio over the past 30 years -- suddenly appeared at three separate locations in Mansfield, Champaign and Harrison counties.
For the second consecutive year, yellow-crowned night herons are nesting in a neighborhood in Bexley, just east of Columbus.
The hottest birder buzz last week was over several sightings of one or more Mississippi kites in Worthington, just north of Columbus. The reports came a year after the state's first-ever nesting of kites at a golf course in Hocking County.
Then on Saturday morning, I was awakened to a familiar song coming from a hemlock outside my bedroom window. It was a white-crowned sparrow, a common visitor to my yard in April and May, but never before in the middle of June, when the "Birds of the Cleveland Region" tells us that white-crowneds are "occasional" and "not to be expected."
