Recently on this list questions have come up about record-late
occurrences of certain species. With the recent warming of the climate,
observers also wonder about record-early appearances in the spring, as
well as the occasional surprising mid-winter bird. No doubt more and
more records are going to be broken, not only because of the weather,
but because more and more birders, increasingly knowledgeable and
interconnected, are on the scene.
        Several times over the past week questions have arisen about late
records, and it might be worthwhile mentioning where the answers are.
For these and many other inquiries, your first resort should be
Peterjohn's "The Birds of Ohio."  This work covers the published record
with great care. Still, it does not treat museum specimens, and of
course contains no information since climate warming seems to have
increased its pace over recent years.
        Checklists, for all their usefulness, seldom treat these outlying
records. The most detailed, the OBRC annotated checklist,  linked at
http://www.ohiobirds.org/publications/checklist/checklists.php  is great
for records of rare species and normal periods for the rest, but does
not treat casual or isolated occurrences at odd times of year.
        Periodicals cover and update such records. "North American Birds" does
this on a regional level, but seldom bothers to recognize late and early
records for Ohio. "The Cleveland Bird Calendar" and "The Bobolink" keep
good track of records in the counties they cover, and "The Ohio
Cardinal" does so on a state level. These are the sources on which books
like "The Birds of Ohio" largely rely, and the best source of this
information.
        For late Ohio records of ruby-throated hummingbird, for example,
Peterjohn is out of date. Two well-documented birds in 2002 stayed until
30 November, one in Westerville and one in Massillon; the Bobolink
published the latter, the Cardinal both. The current Toledo bird is
setting a new record with each passing day, and will be duly chronicled
in the latter journal.
        Peterjohn is understandably vague about late records of ospreys,
another source of questions recently. The great majority of published
December and January records come from Christmas Bird Counts, where the
numbers of inexperienced observers involved provoke extra scrutiny olf
such reports. In many cases compilers' annotations cast doubt on these
IDs, but there are a few with varying degrees of documentation. I find
only a handful of winter records accepted by periodicals. One was
documented in Lorain Co on 13 Jan 1980, another reported in Hocking Co
on 20 Feb 1982, and birds were photographed in 2004 in Darke and Clark
counties on 12 and 15 December respectively. The earliest spring arrival
seems to date from 9 Mar 1991. So Ohio seems to have accepted records of
ospreys in every month of the year.
Bill Whan
Columbus

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