What's New-April 24, 2019 - Birding in Ohio

New Feature

Needs Alert (birds you have not seen in Ohio)
Never Seen – Not Seen This Year
The Needs Alert is available on the Ohio home page in the left column under “Explore Ohio in eBird.”

The Needs Alert links are also available on each county page. You may find it most helpful to view the alert report for the county you are currently visiting.

You must be logged in to your eBird account for this to work. Please let me know how you like this feature.

See About Rare Bird and Needs Alerts for more information.

Focus on . . . blog

Focus on Shawnee State Forest and Shawnee State Park
Links to eBird hotspots, Audubon Important Bird Area page, and two Ohio Birding Drives in this area will be of interest for those attending the Ohio Ornithological Society meeting the weekend of April 26-28.

New eBird Hotspots

Forest Run MetroPark
Photo by Daniel Klar

Athens County

Cucumbertree Trail
Thanks to Trevor Zook for suggesting this hotspot.

Butler County

Forest Run Metropark–Timberman Ridge Area
Thanks to Daniel Klar for suggesting this additional hotspot in the Forest Run MetroPark and for providing photos for the page. This MetroPark has three areas which are geographically separate. There is no general hotspot for the whole MetroPark. The other hotspot in this park is Forest Run Metropark–Wildlife Preserve Area.

Mercer County

Grand Lake Saint Marys State Park–Anderson Road Picnic Area
Thanks to Josh King for suggesting this new hotspot and for providing tips for birding. The hotspot is a sub-location in Grand Lake Saint Marys State Park.

Stark County

Minerva Municipal Park
Thanks to Jon Cefus for suggesting this hotspot and providing photos and tips for birding at this park.

Summit County

Carter Pedigo Trail
Thanks to Ken Andrews for suggesting this hotspot, providing a photo of the trail map, and writing a description of the trail.

Kirtland’s Warbler Migration Blitz Hotspots Retired

Thanks to the many birders who submitted checklists in the Kirtland’s Warbler Migration Blitz research project. In Ohio, we had a little over 300 hotspots (KIWA-OH-survey) set up to accept checklists for the project. The research project is complete and a paper has been published with the results. The survey hotspots have been retired from eBird.
+ A little over half of the hotspots (160) had no checklists and have been deleted.
Survey hotspots with checklists
+ have been merged into an existing hotspot (112),
+ renamed to become a new hotspot (34), or
+ in just a few cases changed to a personal location shared by those who submitted checklists (6).

The new hotspots created from former KIWA-OH-survey locations are listed below. All the new hotspots are active in eBird and pages describing them have been added to the website.