Buzzards’ early return to Ohio a sign of an early spring?
Myth has it that turkey vultures return to Ohio when the state greens up. On the way home from town, just passing the old quarry, I could hardly believe my eyes – buzzards soaring! So soon, on Feb. 8!
In all my 50 years of watching these great soaring raptors – more properly known as turkey vultures – around Froggy Bottom environs, I have not seen them return for spring so early.
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Jim Abrams pens history of the Ohio Division of Wildlife
It is surprising to learn that the first woman to serve as an Ohio game warden, Rosetta Zimmerman, patrolled 25 miles a day on horseback in the state’s southwestern bailiwicks, a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver on her hip and a long knife on her belt – a century ago.
Or that fish reared in state hatcheries early on were delivered in a special railroad box car dubbed the “Buckeye Fish Car” and emblazoned with “Fish and Game” on each side. Those anecdotes and more are part and parcel of Jim Abrams’ new volume, A Crusade for Conservation.
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Steve Pollick: Much good came from a sad loss of a black walnut tree
Spooky Tree was a landmark in my little rural bailiwick, and it stood for decades at the edge of a neighbor’s farm field across the ditch on the township lane that winds back toward town.
It was a black walnut, shaped and sculpted by winds and storms over its time. Each fall, some neighbor would park on the berm and fill baskets with the richly aromatic walnuts and haul them off to their purposes.
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Steve Pollick: Coyote searches for late-night snack in Froggy Bottom
Dead of winter, mid-January. Deep-freeze, zero-degrees, frozen land. No surprise.
Birds almost frantically are mobbing the feeders in the cold, their numbers now including bullying flocks of starlings and grackles, and hordes of pesky, aggressive English (house) sparrows along with the usual more colorful winter-bird suspects. And then, on the trail-cam at 2 a.m., a little unexpected drama: One Wile E. Coyote rousts a white-tailed deer off one of my mineral licks.
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Steve Pollick: Northwest Ohio offers plenty of options to keep winter bird watchers busy
The wood duck box on my pond in Froggy Bottom has an unexpected return resident this fall – a gray screech owl.
The little owl’s appearance was welcome, for I think it may be the same one “Whoo” spent the winter here a year ago. Over the 40-plus years that the box has perched at the southwest corner of the pond, down by the creek, awaiting a guest. Alas, it has been had been a forlorn, empty sentinel.
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Tundra swans make their annual appearance in northwest Ohio
The big white birds are back in “town.” Town being the marshlands and harvested cornfields along western Lake Erie.
These would be tundra swans, by the hundreds, down from Arctic summer nesting grounds some 2,500 to 3,000 miles to the north. The northwest Ohio locale is a major migratory stopover point for these graceful birds as they make their way to traditional wintering grounds around Chesapeake Bay after a summer nesting season in the Arctic of Alaska and Canada.
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Time to stop spread of grass carp is now in Ohio’s Sandusky River
A new federal/state fisheries plan is afoot to further combat the threat of grass carp in the Sandusky River watershed of northwest Ohio and it aims to inhibit the spawning of these destructive, vegetation-devouring behemoths, which can grow as big as trophy king salmon – up to 40 pounds.
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Public can help protect Ohio’s Big, Little Darbies; comment period open until Nov. 17 on protection amendment
If you care about clean water and scenic, biologically rich streams, now is your chance to get on board a drive to encourage the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to declare the Big Darby and Little Darby watershed in west central Ohio as “Outstanding National Resource Waters (ONRW).”
The agency has declared a public comment period until Nov. 17 in its consideration of ONRW designation – the highest protection under the federal Clean Water Act – for these gorgeous, biologically diverse, fish- and wildlife-rich streams in west-central Ohio.
Creating a new rifleman with the M-1 Garand
“In my opinion, the M-1 Rifle is the greatest battle implement ever devised.”
— Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.
The revered and feared U.S. Army tank commander wrote that oft-repeated statement in the final months of World War II, on Jan. 26, 1945, in an official letter to Major General Levin H. Campbell, Jr., who was the War Department’s Chief of Ordnance. Patton went on to praise the effectiveness of other U.S. armaments as well, but the words about the M-1 Garand rifle stood out.
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