Presque Isle State Park Beach Walk

On March 31st the Park Manager of Presque Isle State Park, Harry Leslie, lead a group of state officials, federal engineers, and park staff members on a 6 hour long walk along the beaches of Lake Erie. I was lucky enough to tag along and learned a plethora of information about the ecology of the island and it's wildlife. I thought I would share some pictures and info from the walk, since I won't have any bird banding posts until we start April 15th. Enjoy!

Presque Isle State Park is 255 miles long. It is 75 miles wide at its widest point. At it's narrowest point, it is 24 miles long from NY to Canada. People have swam and kyacked this distance, even walked it when the lake was frozen solid! Being from Maryland, I have never seen a lake like this! It was soooo huge it looked like the ocean. I could not see the other side. The lake is riddled with ice chunks along the coast, making it look like a scene from the arctic. Penguins and polar bears would have fit right in with the scenery. One of the park educators, Brian, was telling me that a storm last year caused 14 foot waves to crash against the shore. We saw a tree that was over 140 years old. We also saw beaver tracks in the sand, which were pretty cool because you could see where their tail dragged behind them and the paths created in the sand from where they lugged stumps and branches of trees with them across the shore. We also went on a tour of the Tom Ridge Education Center and it's amazing research lab, which includes their own greenhouse and live animal facilities.

We saw a wide variety of birds, including: hooded mergansers, redhead ducks, common mergansers, longtail ducks (previously named old squaw), red-breasted mergansers, mallard ducks, a variety of gulls, scoters, Canadian geese, kill deer, horned larks, a female great-horned owl sitting on her nest, pintail ducks, song sparrows, white-throated sparrows, black-capped chickadees, and red-winged black birds.

It turned out to be a perfect day for the beach walk-sunny with no wind and a warm temperature :0) For me, it was a great first look at Lake Erie.