Shane Eggleston, Lee Gruber and I converged on Caesar Creek today to find
130 Snow Geese.  Shane had the best view thanks to some hunters in a
camouflaged boat who repeatedly flushed the birds in Shane's direction.  He
believes he saw one, possibly two Ross's Geese among them.

When I saw them, they were about halfway between the North Pool boat ramp
and the point at Harveysburg Road.  They were too far away for close
observation, but I got a picture of the flock in flight which allowed me to
make a pretty accurate count (+/- 5).  I do not believe these were the same
birds I saw late Monday afternoon.  That flock was larger and had a higher
percentage of the "blue" geese in it.  Larry Gara made a thorough search of
the lake on Tuesday and found no white geese whatsoever.  My theory is that
there were two flocks and both were part of this big movement that has been
reported from widely separated areas of the state for the last ten days.

There were also ten Common Goldeneye at Caesar Creek beach, along with 296
Ring-billed Gulls.  The ring-bills were all third winter/adult basic birds
with the exception of one first-winter bird.  This is a big increase over
the ring-bill numbers of recent weeks.  The ring-bill flock had been stable
at about 40 for several weeks.  On Monday, there were 80 birds at the beach.
 Perhaps colder weather up north is sending them down.

Cheers,

Bob

--
Robert D Powell
Wilmington, OH, USA
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Nulla dies sine linea

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