We had today’s first new bird for the trip before we’d even got out of the car park at the boardwalk at Magee Marsh.  A Common Nighthawk was roosting on the branch of a tree overhanging the car park itself, totally oblivious to all the hustle and bustle just feet below it.  The Tropical Birding guides lost no time in setting up a scope so everyone could have a really close-up look at the slumbering bird.  Second to yesterday’s obliging Kirtland’s Warbler, this bird can probably take the record for the most looked at individual at Magee Marsh.
Back on the boardwalk, once again the birding didn’t disappoint.  The car park may have been full but birders were spread out along the whole length of this meandering trail through the damp woodlands, with everyone excitedly pointing out birds to one another.  A tree stump masquerading as an American Woodcock caused a flurry of excitement, but once again the warblers were the stars of the show, with Canada, Hooded, Magnolia, Chestnut-sided, Bay-breasted, Black-throated Blue, Prothonotary, Yellow, and Yellow-rumped Warblers dazzling the crowds with their colours.  Red-eyed Vireo hopped around the branches at head height picking off tasty grubs, while a rather more subtly-plumaged Warbling Vireo concentrated on building its pretty cup-like nest in the fork of a tree, and a Red-breasted Nuthatch scaled head-first down a tree trunk.
Another ‘Shorebird Walk’ followed in the afternoon, though someone needs to suggest a more appropriate name for this popular outing where we led a 23-car convoy out to the best birding sites!  Marbled Godwit was still attracting a crowd on one muddy field, while the stubble fields opposite held a group of 3 Upland Sandpipers.  The views in the heat haze were a little blurry though with persistence you could still make out their distinctive almost ‘Courser’-like long-necked profile.  Just around the corner, another stubble field had a good mix of waders, with a significant flock of Black-bellied Plovers, all looking very handsome in their breeding plumage with a distinctive black faces, throats and bellies, barring one drab grey non-breeding adult which must have felt a little out of place.  The flock intermingled with numbers of Dunlin, again showing their breeding black bellies, and three Short-billed Dowitchers, in their brick-red breeding plumage, and one handsome Ruddy Turnstone. 
In the evening we gave another talk on The Biggest Twitch to a packed house, another great audience who oohed, ahhed and laughed in all the right places, and had some interesting questions for us afterwards, before we head out for a couple of well-earned beers in Mango Mamas in Port Clinton.
We’re now getting into quite a routine: early breakfast in Port Clinton with eggs, bacon, sausage and potatoes in a variety of tasty but all equally enormous variations, birding, more birding, lunch is quite unnecessary after such a breakfast, birding, more birding and then supper in a variety of venues around the area.  Blackberry Corners is the nearest eatery to the birding sites, where the staff churn out huge quantities of iced tea, coffee, beer, pizza, burgers and chips to the hundreds of birders who have descended on them during The Biggest Week.  Back in Port Clinton, we’ve tried an interesting variation on Shepherd’s Pie in the Irish Bar, have been introduced to ‘Walleye Chips’ (chunky pieces of breaded local fish) and fishcakes and fries in the seafood house, chicken soup with dumplings at Big Boys, and finally somewhere that serves salad – though of course heavily loaded with creamy dressing.  Think it’ll have to be The Biggest Diet when we get back home!