Greetings---another memorable day in Ashtabula Co. today 5/16.  Spent morning and early afternoon at Conneaut harbor.  Shorebirds were coming and going pretty regularly.  Most headed west--heads up HBSP crew.  Best bird was a first-year Iceland gull (record late?).  Other highlights:  red-breasted merganser, 15 black-bellied plovers, 17 semipalmated plovers, greater and lesser yellowlegs, solitary sandpiper, 2 ruddy turnstones, sanderling, semipalmated and least sandpipers, dunlins, 8 short-billed dowitchers, 2 first-year lesser black-backed gulls; Caspian, common and Forster's terns, willow flycatcher, purple martins, marsh wrens, palm warbler.  Next stop of note was at Orwell marsh.  Water levels continue to drop there, and shorebird numbers and variety are increasing.  I tallied 15 semipalmated plovers, 15 lesser yellowlegs, 20 least sandpipers, and 52 dunlins.  Also solitary and semipalmated sandpipers.  Other goodies were 6 blue-winged teal, a hen hooded merganser w/12
 youngsters, sora, and a gorgeous black tern.   Here in my neck of the woods in Mahoning Co., an alder flycatcher was singing in Coitsville Twp. yesterday.  A pretty good assortment of warblers has shown up locally, with Tennessees singing up a storm recently.  Most of the other Neotrops have returned in healthy numbers, especially wood thrushes and rose-breasted grosbeaks.     Later, Craig

---------------------------------
Park yourself in front of a world of choices in alternative vehicles.
Visit the Yahoo! Auto Green Center.

______________________________________________________________________

Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society.
Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list.
Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/.

You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS
Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]