Each month, our OOS Regional Directors are sharing their favorite birding hotspots in their respective regions – and beyond. These include some well-know destinations, specialty spots for specific species, and their own secret, treasured local patches. Have a favorite birding location? Reach out to your OOS Regional Director and let them know!
Melissa Wales – Southeast Regional Director
Poston Preserve / Hockhocking Adena Bikeway – Athens County
The 21-mile-long Hockhocking Adena Bikeway in Athens County offers an array of good birding spots. The stretch just south of Nelsonville at Glen Ebon Road (County Road 4) is a particularly good one with parking on either side of the bike path. Heading north or south will take you into tracts of the Poston Nature Preserve. Fall can offer up migrating thrushes and warblers as well as incoming sparrows and kinglets. Keep your eye on the Hocking River on the east side of the bike path for possible ducks.
Diana Steele – Northeast Regional Director
Carlisle Reservation – Lorain County
Carlisle Reservation is the largest of Lorain County’s metroparks, comprising nearly 2,000 acres. The Equestrian Center offers a variety of edge and wetland habitats as well as a riparian zone along the Black River. A favorite October walk, the Northern Loop Horse trail, encircles a meadow and weaves into the woods along the river. In fall, this edge habitat is great for sparrows of all kinds, including song, white-throated, white-crowned, and Lincoln’s.
An added benefit of walking the trail in October is the ghouls, goblins, and skeletons set up for the drive-through “Halloween Boo-Thru” on October weekend nights. (Note that the park normally closes at sunset and the Boo-Thru is a ticketed, drive-through-only event.)
Jon Cefus – East Central Regional Director
Salt Fork State Park and Seneca Lake – Guernsey County
Kandace Glanville – Central Regional Director
Walnut Woods Metro Park – Tall Pines Area – Franklin County
Walnut Woods Metro Park – Tall Pines Area in Franklin county is a great place to look for owls in the fall and winter months. Barred Owl, Great Horned Owl, Eastern Screech-owl, Long-eared Owl, and Northern Saw-whet Owl have all been detected at this metro park in the last year! Tricky to find, and even more difficult to see, it often involves a long night hike and a lot of patience in the dark. Give the owls their much-needed space, have patience, and with some luck, you might be able to hear or see them just after dusk – or if you’re extra lucky, find them roosting in the daylight.
In the daylight hours, it’s a lovely park to go for a stroll on the nicely paved path winding through the “tall pines.”
