Birds of the Lake Erie Region by Carolyn V. Platt

Author:Carolyn V. Platt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kent State University Press

Reduced to fewer than 1,500 pairs outside Alaska in 1982, bald eagles have rebounded in the last decade thanks to banning of DDT and strenuous efforts by wildlife managers. The Erie marshes provide vital habitat for these big birds, and sightings of eagles at the nest, quartering the marshes, or perching on muskrat houses are now frequent. Preserving adequate habitat is the most important factor in their conservation.

A pintail drake preens to keep his bridal attire in trim. Good numbers of these dabbling ducks appear in the marshes each spring. The species has declined sharply in recent years for unknown reasons. It is to be hoped that the handsome ducks will begin to recover in the new century as wood ducks did in the last.

The marshes formed a vast and busy world. From what is now the town of Vermilion to the mouth of the Detroit River in Michigan stretched an estimated 300,000 acres of marshes and swamp forest, covering an almost-flat area once occupied by a larger postglacial lake. Mile after mile of waving marsh vegetation harbored ducks and geese; herons, bitterns and rails; dabbling coots and diving grebes. The marshes also sheltered muskrat, mink, raccoons, foxes, weasels, and other furbearers and offered spawning grounds to many Lake Erie fish. Frogs and toads peeped and trilled in the cattails, and snapping turtles lurked in wait for the spring hatch of fuzzy ducklings. Bald eagles, northern harriers, short-eared owls, and other birds of prey hunted the sedge meadows and pools. In Ohio the marshes averaged about two miles wide and extended to the edge of the forbidding Great Black Swamp forest that in turn stretched far westward to where Fort Wayne, Indiana, now stands.

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