Anyone looking for winter finches, or just a remote place hike, in Stark County may want to consider the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District land along Dueber Avenue between Downing and Gracemont.

There is a great hawk-watching and gull-watching site atop the hill where Eastern Meadowlarks were still lingering into November and may be wintering. Virginia Rails were found in the cattails along the pond on the west side of the road, and there is excellent potential for Northern Shrike, Nelson’s and Le Conte’s Sparrows, and other hard-to-find species in season.

It is not a highly developed property as the trails are fairly rugged and the parking and other facilities are limited, but the payoff is one of the less crowded, “wilderness” "-like settings in Stark County. It also happens to hold the best crop of alders and sycamores accessible in the county and should be the best place in Stark to find redpolls, siskins, and crossbills.

One day Ben Morrison and I scoped through a group of birds devouring seeds from the tall sycamores behind the pond on the west side of Dueber and conservatively found 25 American Goldfinch, 12 Yellow-rumped Warbler, 2 Pine Siskin, and at least 7 Purple Finch. If redpolls are going to show up in Stark, this is as fine a spot as there is.

The Dueber Avenue hotspot is very undeveloped public hunting land owned by the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District. The trails are an unmarked combination of hunter/trapper trails along with a few horseback riding trails. There are two places to park that both have space for no more than two cars. One of these is on the west side of Deuber Avenue just north of Ullet Street. A narrow hunter's trail goes west from here across a small bridge. A bit further north adjacent to a large pond along the west side of Dueber there is some parking on both sides of the road along the south edge of the pond. From here, a trail runs west along the south side of the pond, it passes the pond and then splits. One trail goes straight up the hill and dead-ends near the Republic landfill boundary. Just past the pond another branch heads north and circles the pond. Several smaller trails also branch off.