Cleveland, Ohio
Best known for its hall of fame museum, the city of Cleveland is also home to many great birds – music to the ears of the visiting birder!
Cleveland is a small and friendly city with fewer than 400,000 inhabitants, situated in the north of Ohio along the shores of Lake Erie. It’s not a glitzy city, although it is home to the nationally famous Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Cleveland had a disastrous pollution record in the past, with the lowlight being when the city’s Cuyahoga River unbelievably caught alight in 1969, due to all the toxic inflammable chemicals contained within it. Thankfully, things are different today. The rivers and other waterways have been cleaned up, along with stretches of land that were hitherto chemical dumping grounds. Unfortunately, many trees have been lost in the city, and it now has a paltry 19% tree cover, despite being once nicknamed the Forest City. However, there are plans afoot to rectify this situation.
There is a thriving birding community in Cleveland who are all actively out in the field, regularly finding extralimital state rarities, like the recent Tropical Kingbird, Limpkin and Cattle Egret. More usual are the thousands of Ring-billed Gulls that are particularly prevalent along the city’s shoreline with the great Lake Erie. Theirs is a story of successful urban colonisation – as recently as the 1970s they were a scarcity in Cleveland. But after an exponential population explosion they are now perhaps the commonest gull species in North America. It is crazy to think that they were once hunted for their feathers during the 19th Century. Walking around the streets of Cleveland you will be sure to register garrulous Blue Jays, an abundance of House Sparrows and Starlings, alongside American Robins and Song Sparrows. Northern Cardinals (the state bird) are common, as are the celebrated Northern Mockingbirds.
Stand anywhere along Lake Erie’s shore, listening to the lapping waves, and you would be forgiven for thinking that you were at the seaside. All you will see is water, as the next landfall is Canada to the north, some 70 miles over the horizon. Scanning the water during the winter months would certainly result in seeing literally thousands of Ring-billed Gulls, with lesser numbers of American Herring Gulls. There will also be hundreds of Double-crested Cormorants. They are the city’s default cormorant species, as the Great Cormorant (the same species as the one that graces our reservoirs in the UK) is a mega rarity here. Sometimes, packs of Bonaparte’s Gulls swarm through the vista. These graceful gulls give the impression of being like dainty Black-headed Gulls. They share a similar looking winter plumage to our familiar gull that, incidentally, is a major rarity here, but seem to gleam brighter with their whiter forewing flashes. The other default waterbird to be noted during your wintry scan will be Great Northern Divers
or Common Loons, as they are known in North America. They really seem to be common here and you would have to consider yourself unlucky if you didn’t come across one.
There are an abundance of sites to bird in Cleveland, and one of the key areas downtown is marketed as the Emerald Necklace around the city. Within this area, Edgewater Park and Wendy Park are two gems well worth checking for both migrants and larids. Wendy Park, especially, has a much-vaunted list of rare gulls, invariably found by a dedicated group of birders who seemingly spend their lives sifting through the Ring-billed Gull flocks.
Rivergate Park is a great migrant trap with its bushes attracting a multitude of American warblers including the likes of the glorious Prothonotary Warbler, along with Cape May, Magnolia, Bay-breasted and many others. Its riparian trees are also good for Night Herons. The Cuyahoga River dissects the park and, when the lake freezes during the winter, it is very often one of the few unfrozen areas of water. This is thanks to a nearby steel mill pumping warm water into the river and thus pulling in the birds from miles around. There will be numerous duck, including Redhead and Scaup. More rarely, a Harlequin Duck may pop in.
Right in the heart of Cleveland is Erie Street Cemetery, the city’s oldest necropolis. It is encircled by a large baseball stadium and Cleveland’s only skyscrapers, and at first glance it is not much to look at: a small walled burial ground with scattered large trees and no undergrowth. Yet it is a treasure-trove, with more than 200 species recorded. Erie Street Cemetery is far from dead.
The secret is to walk near to the walls examining the grassy areas for tired migrant warblers and American sparrows hopping around. This is a great site to discover migrant American Woodcocks that can even be found walking along the tops of the walls themselves where Whip-poorwill’s (a New World nightjar) have also been discovered resting up. Least and American Bitterns have both been seen landing in the trees that have also hosted Common Nighthawk and owls, such as Northern Saw-whet.
The cemetery forms part of the stomping ground for a group known as Lights Off Cleveland, whose sole purpose is to rescue birds that have struck the windows of the downtown tall buildings. Their circuit also takes them past Public Square, a concrete plaza with a tiny manicured patch of green with an incredible bird list. Even though there are only a handful of young trees there, it is possible to see Yellow-bellied Sapsucker and a host of warbler and sparrow species during migration, including Swamp Sparrow. Plus, it is always worth checking the edges of the lawn for American Woodcock.
Thanks to: The great Jen Brumfield, Wendy Clark, Nancy Howell, Tim Jasinski, Liz McQuaid, Chuck Slusarczyk Jr, Western Cuyahoga Audubon Society and Betsey O’Hagan for hosting me, plus everyone else that shared their knowledge and love.