I was at Killdeer plains today about 9:30 am to see all the snow geese
reported the last two days, but found not a snow goose anywhere. I talked
with a guy who was there at dawn and he said a big flock lifted off earlier
and headed south. I did find one white-fronted goose on Pond 27 along with
lots of Canada geese and about 125 tundra swans there. Next I checked the
Harold Roe pond. There were lots of Canada geese and tundra swans there
too, plus one mute swan, but no other geese. The rest of the morning I
drove around, checking various places. I looked hard for Northern shrike,
but never found one.

I checked the owl pines, but nothing there. At that time, I ran into Su
Snyder and Sue Evanoff and they told me of a flock of rusty blackbirds at
the south end of TH-108. About 1:15pm, as I was driving south on 108, near
Harold Roe pond, a very large flight of snow geese flew over quite high,
heading south. I had a great scope view of these as they flew over,
probably at least 500 geese. I then checked for the blackbirds and they
were on both sides of 108 about 1/4 mile north of the intersection with
Morral-Kirkpatrick. There were about 100 birds including about even numbers
of rusty and redwing blackbirds, with a few cowbirds too. I stopped back at
Pond 27 and found a lot more white-fronted geese, a count of 80 is
conservative, as they were mixed in with a lot of Canada geese.

I decided to head down to Big Island refuge, which turned out to be a
mistake as there was very little there. Driving back through Killdeer
Plains about 3:15pm on CH-115, another very large flight of snow geese went
over, again over 500 birds heading south. Not sure what is going on with
these snow geese, but they are heading south. It looks like afternoon might
be the better time to seek them. Randy Rowe, Wooster

______________________________________________________________________

Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society.
Please consider joining our Society, at www.ohiobirds.org/site/membership.php.
Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list.


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