Dowitchers in Roscommon, Wexford & Midland

[Cccta at aol.com]

Hello All,
 
Saturday birding wound up being all about the Dowitchers. Robert Epstein  and 
I headed North, hoping in vain for word of another sighting of the  
Heermann's Gull in the yoop. We started birding in the Houghton Lake area and  had a 
fun day with shorebirds after finding 6 species of Woodpeckers in one spot  
outside Prudenville. We walked in to the Prudenville Sewage Ponds from the North  
and had only Spotted & Least Sandpipers, Lesser Yellowlegs, a pair of  
Semipalmated Plovers and Killdeer.
 
>From there we headed West a few miles to the Houghton Lake Sewage Ponds and  
found the gate open. We drove in and asked one of the workers if we could 
drive  around to check out the birds. His "I don't see why not" was all we needed. 
We  drove around the two ponds on the East and scoped the dryish area on the 
South  that was actively being pumped and dozed. We found more of the same 
plus a pair  of Stilt Sandpipers and a single Short-billed Dowitcher. There is a 
large new  pond to the West which only held Spotteds. During a final look we 
were unable to  relocate the Dowitcher but it may have just been hidden from 
view. Of course the  gate was LOCKED when we went to leave (they were still 
working) and we had to  drive out through the construction entrance which was 
fortunately still  open.
 
Later in the rainy afternoon we wound up at the MDOT ponds just Northwest  of 
Manton in Wexford County at the corner of 37 Road and 12 Road. I had been  
there to see the Hudsonian Godwits on May 24 also and I was quite surprised at  
the huge volume of vegetation that has grown up since then. The shorebirds are 
 MUCH harder to find now. We had a Semi-Sand, Leasts and one Short-billed  
Dowitcher with the Killdeer in the middle section of the ponds. On the East side 
 of the road in the wet spots in the mowed field (which held a singing  
Grasshopper Sparrow in May) we found a Lesser Yellowlegs and two groups of Snipe  
totalling 23 birds.
 
Stopping at the Dow Ponds on Poseyville Rd in Midland on the way home we  had 
fun watching the young Common Terns. We had been there for 20 minutes or so  
before the umpteenth sweep of the long sandspit revealed 6  Short-billed 
Dowitchers. We scoped them for a few minutes and then they picked  up and flew 
around a couple of times before heading South, high over Poseyville  Rd. On the 
way out we saw 7 Black-crowned Night Herons roosting in the swamp on  the West 
side of the road.
 
Good Dowitchering,
 
Scott Jennex
Ferndale
 
 



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