Hold onto your safari hats and binoculars, Great Lakes birders.
Head to the Lake Erie shoreline and you may see one of these beautiful birds. Photo: Ed Gaillard (Flickr)
Lake Erie Ohio Birding is a new website detailing about 84 birding sites along the Lake Erie shoreline. It has driving directions, species information and local attractions.
It also has more than 1,600 photos of Lake Erie birds to get you amped up before you go get your bird on.
The website covers approximately 312 miles of Lake Erie shoreline, one of the region’s best birding coasts. State officials estimate that 400 species of birds pass through the shoreline.
And the cold weather doesn’t slow the birding action, according to state officials.
Through winter, birders in northern Ohio can watch several duck species. Among the common gulls, birders can spot rarer Arctic species, such as Glaucus gulls and Iceland gulls, Jim McCormac said in a prepared statement. McCormac is a wildlife public information officer with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The department partnered with Ohio Sea Grant on the website.
The winter’s already excited birders in northeast Ohio who spotted two of the rare snowy owls.
What better way to shed some of the holiday pounds and seasonal gloom than to see a wintry shoreline host beautiful birds?
Cant wait to get my bird on!
Winter time is a great time to see a number of bird species which come down from the high north and arctic regions. Lapland Longspurs, Snow Buntings and Short-eared Owls are just a few of the species which can be viewed at numerous places throughout Michigan. This year, Snowy Owls (the unnamed bird in the photo) are having what is known as an irruption year, and have arrived from the north in great numbers. They have been seen at many sites, but the most reliable place to see them in southern Michigan has been at Lake St. Clair Metropark (formerly, Metro Beach Metropark). As for shoreline viewing areas, you can’t top Michigan!