Birders Flock to New Visitor Center: Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge Celebrates $3.6M Facility
By Jc Reindl, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio
May 13–OAK HARBOR, Ohio — While celebrating International Migratory Bird Day and opening its new $3.6 million visitors’ center, the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge received the title yesterday of “Important Bird Area.”
Not surprisingly, that official Audubon Ohio designation had little news value for the thousands of devoted bird watchers on site.
With their neck straps, binoculars, and pocket vests, the hard-core birders have been making day trips to the refuge for years. They are lured by the more than 325 bird species known to appear at this time of year within the refuge’s 9,000 acres of pristine forest, swamps, and marshland.
“I’ve been doing this for 10, 15 years. I started coming here and fell in love with this place,” said Terri Wehrman, who made the two-hour trip from Sidney, Ohio. “Just like a lot of people get into car racing or football, [birding] gets in your blood.”
The wildlife refuge was created in 1961 and straddles Lucas and Ottawa counties, about 20 miles east of Toledo.
Many birds sighted yesterday, such as warblers and various shore birds, are not native to northwest Ohio. They are just passing through and hanging out for a week or so during their northern spring migration from Central and South America, refuge Manager Doug Brewer said.
“We’re a migration rest stop for a lot of these birds,” he said.
Because of the visitors’ center grand opening, refuge staff anticipated close to 6,000 visitors yesterday, twice the number that typically shows up on migratory bird day.
The three-story visitors’ center was designed, in part, as a modern update of a traditional hunting lodge and loosely based on the former Cedar Point Hunt Club building that dated to the late 19th century. It covers 13,000 square feet and has meeting rooms, a gift shop, interactive migration and wildlife exhibits, and an observation deck.
The center was constructed with environmentally friendly materials such as gas-filled windows for extra insulation and a lighter colored metal roof to keep the building cool, Mr. Brewer said.
The centerpiece is the geothermal climate-control system, which extracts heat and coolness from water in a nearby 20-foot-deep pond to regulate indoor air temperature.
Among yesterday’s highlights was the opportunity for a close-up view of a bald eagle’s nest. With the naked eye, the nest appeared a half-mile away as a dark spot near the top of a tree.
Yet through a high-powered spotting scope, one could make out with startling detail an eagle guarding a brood of three eaglets.
“The eagle was sitting right there on the nest,” said Pat Limes of Bowling Green, still in disbelief. “You can see that nest just as clear as can be.”
Yet most of the bird watching happened outside the visitors’ center, along the refuge’s nine miles of hiking trails and seven miles of gravel roads that carry the self-guided vehicle tour.
To reduce disturbances to wildlife, the tour route usually is open just once a month; however, it will be open today at 9 a.m. in honor of migratory bird day weekend.
No sooner did their sport utility vehicle start the tour, when Chris Juhl of Piqua, Ohio, asked her sister, Mrs. Wehrman, to pull over so they could check out the trumpeter swans.
One particularly rakish swan flapped its wings and sauntered around a marsh nest that Mrs. Juhl surmised had been stolen from a muskrat.
“This is the closest we’ve ever gotten to one,” said Mrs. Juhl, 59, putting down her binoculars and reaching for a camera.
Their mother, Thelma Kleiner, climbed out of the back seat and the three women stood silent for a moment at the marsh’s edge until the white swan tiptoed into the water and floated away.
The sisters said they take their mother to the Ottawa refuge as a gift every year at this time because migratory bird day falls on the second Saturday in May — the day before Mother’s Day.
“We don’t even have to think what to get her,” Mrs. Juhl said, adding, “It’s also a sneaky way to give ourselves a gift.”
Contact JC Reindl at: jreindl@theblade.com or 419-724-6050.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio
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