Kilby Road Ponds Preserve/ Fernald Preserve
To rise bright and early to go birding has become almost second nature for me, even when I hardly got any sleep last night. I was up at 5 a.m. just like it was a regular workday, showered, dressed, caffeinated, gear gathered, topping off of the bird-mobile with go juice, and on the highway with a donut in my mouth by 6:30. Agenda for the day, meet up with the local Audubon Society for a morning of birding.
Kilby Road Ponds Preserve was a recent aquisition by the Hamilton County Parks for the sole purpose of keeping it in it’s natural state. With parcels on both sides of Kilby Road the park encompasses several hundred acres. This morning we hit both sides of the road, and had pretty good luck.
A view from a rise looking across some of the grass land the park wants to keep in it’s natural state.
This lake is owned by a gravel company which still operates here, hence it’s private property. From this view we were able to spot a Common Loon on the water. Kind of unusual for this time of year.
Going across the street towards the Whitewater River, you enter an area that was once working gravel pits. They are now full of water and sustain all sorts of wildlife. The trial around this area totals about 3 miles and you’ll go by 5 good size lakes that were once gravel pits.
After spending about 2 hours here, it was time to head over to one of my favorite places to bird.
Joining the group today of 10 birders was Gary Stenger. Gary used to work at Fernald and now he is the local amateur expert on all things Fernald. As a matter of fact he still remembered me from when we put on the Bird Study Merit Badge Workshop earlier in the Spring. Very nice guy and very knowledgeable when it comes to birds and where to find them. A good many of the birds we spotted at Kilby Road, were also present at Fernald. We covered most of the grassland habitat behind the Visitors Center, including a trail that was off limits to the normal visitors. That’s the perk for having Gary along, we were able to visit with a family of Hooded Mergansers on a pond you normally couldn’t see from the trail that’s open to the public. With the way the land rolls and undulates, we would come upon a hidden pond that has Willow’s growing around the edge. If you were on the public trail, you would never know it was there. This was a special treat for the group to be able to go into restricted areas.
All told, we spent about 4 hours birding, before we went our separate ways at 12:00. However before we left I was able to get a fairly decent picture of a Dickcissel, which were fairly common at Fernald.
Dickcissel
Notable birds for both locations include:
- American Robin
- Mockingbird
- Common Grackle
- Northern Rough-winged Swallow
- Turkey Vulture
- Morning Dove
- Mallard
- Canada Goose
- Cooper’s Hawk
- Great Blue Heron
- American Kestrel
- Barn Swallow
- Tree Swallow
- Eastern Meadowlark
- Belted Kingfisher
- Red-winged Blackbird
- Field Sparrow
- Grasshopper Sparrow
- Dickcissel
- Killdeer
- Bank Swallow
- Gray Catbird
- Lark Sparrow
- Spotted Sandpiper
- Rock Dove
- Common Yellowthroat
- Bell’s Vireo
- Song Sparrow
- Common Loon
- Indigo Bunting
- Northern Cardinal
- Baltimore Oriole
- Orchard Oriole
- Yellow Warbler
- Eastern Goldfinch
- Brown Thrasher
- Common Crow
- Mute Swan
- Yellow-throated Warbler
- Red-tailed Hawk
- Eastern Kingbird
- Willow Flycatcher
- Blue Grosbeak
- Green Heron
- Hooded Merganser
- Purple Martin
- Blue Jay
- Ruby-throated Hummingbird
- Northern Flicker
- Red-bellied Woodpecker
- House Wren
- House Finch
- Cedar Waxwing
A Birder's Notebook 