I arrived at Charlie's Pond at 6:55 a.m. this morning (June 9) with my sister, and we began to hear the Black Rail vocalize with its distinctive "kee-kee-drrr" within minutes. It was calling from the north side of Radcliffe Road quite close to the road.  It called for about 10-15 minutes.  Then we both heard a "drrr" a little to the west.  I thought it came from the south side of the road, but my sister thought it came from the north side.  We listened and looked for a few minutes without hearing or seeing anything else.  Then as I was looking to the west, I saw the rail (for about one and a half seconds) fly from high grass on the north side of the road into high grass on the south side of the road.  I estimate it flew about 1 to 2 feet above the road, with its legs hanging down.  We heard another "drrr" or two on the south side where it entered the high grass, but it was quiet after that and we decided to leave and do some other birding.

We aren't sure whether the rail that flew over the road was responding to another on the south side of the road, or whether the "drrr" we heard was from the same bird.

We saw many of the other birds that others have been seeing on Radcliffe Road and River Road except for the blue grosbeak.  We pulled off onto the dirt road that goes back to the water treatment plant off of River Road near the airport to look for the blue grosbeak.  While driving down that road, we believe we heard a Vesper Sparrow.  We saw it fly but didn't get it visually ID'd.  (FYI, it is hard for two cars to pass one another on the dirt road except at its beginning and end, and several big wide trucks went to and from the treatment plant while we were there.  We were lucky our timing worked out that we didn't run into a problem).  We also saw and heard Grasshopper Sparrows and Willow Flycatchers in that area.

Marcia Brehmer, Columbus
Melanie Shuter, Circleville

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