Guest article by Mike Morgante, Regional Coordinator for the western region
The eBird checklist tells me it was the morning of April 4, 2020. Just weeks into the pandemic, in what already felt like a long time spent at home, I decided on a Friday night that I would get up early the next morning and try for woodcocks and owls in the priority block I signed up for. This would be my first outing for the new atlas. Since I did not know the block well, I did some quick scouting with the block map before going to bed. I knew a good spot for woodcocks but was not sure where to try for owls. I found a road on the eastern edge of the block without any houses and plenty of forested habitat and decided that would be my destination. The woodcocks delivered right away with a winnowing snipe as well, so I drove off to my hopeful owl spot. I found the road to be narrow and pulled off to the side as far as I could. It was completely dark and still with a little misty fog. I whistled a bunch trying for Eastern Screech-Owl, but there was no response. I was concerned about any cars driving by in the dark to not see me or the parked car, even with my reflective vest on, so I kept looking east down the road. As I turned to try to elicit a Barred Owl response with calls from my phone, I noticed some distant lights along the road. They seemed far away, so I kept playing some more owl calls. I kept an occasional eye on the distant car, and it did not seem to be moving quickly. The lights were more orange than typical car headlights, and they seemed close together for even a small car. Then it seemed to either be along the edge of the road or maybe even in the woods. Soon after I no longer saw the lights, so I didn’t know what became of it. I thought it was odd that I did not hear any car noises on a still night. I kept trying for owls with no luck. As it started getting lighter, I saw a silent Barred Owl fly in that was a nice record for northern Erie County.
After sunrise I drove the roads in the block to get familiar with them. I arrived home around 9:30 a.m. and found my family at the kitchen table. I took pride in finding out that none of them heard me leave the house in the early morning. I answered their questions about why I got up so early to bird near home. I told them about calling for owls in the pitch-black night and fog on Delaware Road. That drew silence and some strange looks. I forget who but someone thought I was joking with them. “Delaware Road?” they said. “Yes, Delaware Road” I said. They started calling me crazy for going out alone in the dark on Delaware Road. I clearly had no idea what they were getting at until they told me that is the haunted road that everyone in Clarence knows about. Apparently, everyone but me. They took to their phones to pull up articles to show me that spoke of Delaware Road being one of the most haunted locations in western New York! There were descriptions of many encounters of weird and paranormal activity, including in recent years by ‘ghost hunters’, plus rumors that it was a former Klu Klux Klan ritual and lynching area. One of the most frequent encounters described on these websites was of an old man with a lantern, sometimes with another who also held a lantern. While I tend to not believe in such things, I had to wonder if those lights I saw were from an oddly moving and silent car, or whether they were more in line with these descriptions of lanterns?
I returned many times to Delaware Road in 2020. It was the best spot for atlasing from the roadside in the entire block. I got to know the breeding birds along the stretch of road up to the atlas block boundary very well. I didn’t go out there much before sunrise again though, and rarely walked the road beyond the atlas boundary down near where I saw the lights that morning.
So, does anyone want to help me complete the nocturnal survey hours in this priority block?