Notes From The Field

Sugar Grove Cemetery & Caesar Creek Nature Center

With all the kids home this weekend for the first time since Laura got married (and that didn’t really count considering how hectic it was during this time) my time with my children didn’t leave me with too much time to go birding. However I did squeak out a few hours Sunday late morning after Laura drove back to Michigan, so I really wanted to check out Sugar Grove Cemetery. I had posted a “Rare Bird Alert” from a sighting of White-winged Crossbills a few days earlier, so I was hoping that they might still be around like the ones at the cemetery in Toledo that had them all Winter.

As with most cemeteries I’ve birded in the past they hold a  lot of potential for good birds, especially with all the mature trees and how the Evergreens have produced bumper crops of cones this year.

I arrived a little before 11:00 am and located the area that was described in the posting on Cincinnatibirds. Somehow I felt like I was in the wrong area since I was unable to find the grave stone with the correct name on it that marked the area for sure. I’m not real good at identifying trees but I do remember the Hemlocks that the Crossbills were feeding on in Toledo last year, and if iIremember correctly Hemlocks have small cones and most of the Evergreens there had larger cones. Will Crossbills feed on the larger cones? I don’t know the answer to this question, but other birds were feeding heavily on the larger cones, but alas no Crossbills.

After about an hour I drove to the Nature Center at Caesar Creek to check out their large stand of Evergreens along the drive. No Crossbills but a good many “Red-Nuts” Boy do I love those birds.

So with my small window of birding opportunity shrinking it was time to go.

Notable birds for the day:

1. Cedar Waxwing
2. Yellow-rumped Warbler
3. White-breasted Nuthatch
4. Red-breasted Nuthatch
5. Pine Siskin
6. Downy Woodpecker
7. Pileated Woodpecker
8. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
9. Black Vulture
10. Black Vulture
11. Red-shouldered Hawk
12. Red-tailed Hawk
13. Northern Cardinal
14. American Robin
15. Carolina Wren
16. Carolina Chickadee
17. Dark-eyed Junco
18. Blue Jay
19. Red-bellied Woodpecker
20. Ruby-crowned Kinglet
21. White-throated Sparrow
22. American Goldfinch