Oh Moma Mia, Moma Mia!

     Quoting Freddie Mercury and Queen can only mean one thing. Well I guess it could mean 3 things... 1. Some sporting team just won a championship or they are "rocking" someone. 2. Its time to party. 3. Bohemian. Waxwing..... Since this is a bird blog its safe to say that this post will be about the third option with a little bit of the second, and really a tiny bit of the first as well. I mean it is March Madness after all but I digress. Back to the action and what has me singing. My Sunday started out like most Sundays, that is until about 12:00pm when I my phone started ringing. Hmmmm Jeremy is calling, this must either be rare bird related or he crashed his car again. Luckily it was the former. The dialog went something like this:

    Jeremy, "Bro, Bohemian Waxwings!" 

    Me, "What?!?!? Where, who?!?! Its March dude!" 

    Jeremy, " Doreene told Leslie to tell to tell Alex to tell me. Its at Lake Erie Bluffs. I'm going. I'm turning around and going!"

   Me, "Doreene is spreading the word? Must be good. Do you even know where the Bluffs are?"

   Jeremy, "No idea but I'm going!"

   Me, "haha! Its faaaarrrr!! Like close to 4 hours far. Screw it come pick me up and let's roll!"

     

2 of the 5 very sexy Bohemian Waxwings. For face melting pics
by Chris Collins of these birds, see the link below!
Be warned, your face might melt.

     We are off by 1 pm. Only about 3 hours and 45 min before waxy goodness. We stopped in Columbus to pick up Alex  who wanted to join the party. Off again! This long drive doesn't seem nearly as long due in part to the thrill of chase but more so just catching up with these fellow Rogue Birder members. (If you don't know what the Rogue Birders are, check out the blog on the right side of this page.) Jeremy had recently returned from Florida and Alex literally just got back from the Rio Valley so they had lots of fun bird stories to tell. Next thing you know we are 20 min out and I get a text from Doreene, "We have the birds". Perfect! We roll up in the parking lot, rush out to where the 20+ people are and look through a scope set up on the birds. Bang that was easy! Less than 30 seconds later however they all flew off. So we wait for about 20 minutes and they all come flying right back. All 5 of them and their Bohemian goodness. We snap a few distant pics and watch them until they fly off again. Amazing birds!

     After the BOWA, we decided to make a pit stop in Shaker Heights to try for the Fish Crows that nest there. These would also be an Ohio lifer for me. I always feel weirded out just driving through neighborhoods really slowly, over and over, for hours looking for birds. But that's what we did until we finally come on to 3 crows. 1 for sure spoke American, the other looked big and probably also spoke American but the third, smaller bird must have been a mime cause it just would not speak! We followed these 3 crows around for over 20 minutes and never heard a peep from the little guy so we couldn't call it a FICR. Stupid crows. Oh well. 3 more hours of driving and back home by midnight! 11 hour trip for Bohemian Waxwing and it was worth every second!

     The next morning Chris made the almost 8 hour round trip up there, hid in some bushes and got the greatest BOWA photos in the history of the world. Seriously you should check them out. Face Melting BOWA pic!  It was also his 300th Ohio Life bird so a BIG Congrats to Chris on that great accomplishment!