I have never had the desire to do a Big Day (24 hour birding marathon)
but every Jan. 1, I try to do a "Medium-sized" Day, a day spent alone,
just birding my local patch.  The duration of the day depends on the
weather and my stamina, since I am, for the most part, a fair-weather
birder.  I think today was the longest ever, 12 hours.  I was out from
7am till 7pm, and birded the following areas in Clermont and Hamilton
Counties:  Crooked Run Nature Preserve (Chilo), Mehldahl Dam, East Fork
State Park, the Cincinnati Nature Center (all in Clermont County),
Armleder Park and the Camp Dennison gravel pits (Hamilton Co.)

My day started with my first bird of the year, a heard-only Great Horned
Owl at Chilo and ended with a heard-only Barred Owl at the Horseman's
Area on the north side of East Fork State Park.  In between, I found the
following:

[Using the codes below, I have only listed the first place I saw a
species.  The +  sign means "and other places"]

AP: Armleder Park
CD: Camp Dennison
CNC: Cincinnati Nature Center
CR: Crooked Run
EF: East Fork
MD: Mehldahl Dam

  1) Great Blue Heron (CR)
  2) Canada Goose (MD+)
  3) Mallard (CD)
  4) American Wigeon (CD)
  5) Northern Shoveler (CD)
  6) Canvasback (CD)
  7) Redhead (CD)
  8) Ring-necked Duck (CD)
  9) Bufflehead (CD)
10) Hooded Merganser (CD)
11) Ruddy Duck (CD)
12) Turkey Vulture (CNC+)
13) Northern Harrier (AP)
14) Red-shouldered Hawk (MD+)
15) Red-tailed Hawk (AP)
16) American Kestrel (MD+)
17) American Coot (CD)
18) Ring-billed Gull (MD+)
19) Rock Pigeon (driving)
20) Mourning Dove (CR+)
21) Great Horned Owl (CR)
22) Barred Owl (EF)
23) Red-bellied Woodpecker (CR+)
24) Downy Woodpecker (CR+)
25) Pileated Woodpecker (CR)
26) Blue Jay (CR+)
27) American Crow (CR+)
28) Carolina Chickadee (CR+)
29) Brown Creeper (CR)
30) Tufted Titmouse (CR+)
31) White-breasted Nuthatch
32) Carolina Wren (CR+)
33) Winter Wren (CR)
34) Golden-crowned Kinglet (CR)
35) Eastern Bluebird (MD+)
36) American Robin (CR+)
37) Northern Mockingbird (CR+)
38) European Starling (CR+)
39) Yellow-rumped Warbler (CR)
40) Northern Cardinal (CR+)
41) Eastern Towhee (CR+)
42) Field Sparrow (CR+)
43) American Tree Sparrow (CR+)
44) Song Sparrow (CR+)
45) Swamp Sparrow (EF)
46) White-throated Sparrow (CR+)
47) Dark-eyed Junco (EF+)
48) American Goldfinch (MD+)

Good gets: the pileated, the harrier, the kinglet, and the owls
Sweet surprises:  the brown creeper and the winter wren
Disappointments: no purple finches, cedar waxwings, flickers,
sapsuckers, or hermit thrushes
Odd misses: kingfisher, killdeer, Cooper's hawk, and oddest of all, no
house sparrows (And I drove through 3 McDonald's parking lots looking
for them!)

Nearly half-way to my 100 mark (Which I will never get, and that is OK
by me!)

Happy New Birding Year to all!

Kathi Hutton
Felicity, OH
Clermont County

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