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?