Well it was a decent day weather wise, a bit cold and dreary, but we saw some nice birds, and met a number of other birders out in the field today. The group I was with from the Delaware Co. Bird club (all 6 of us) started off at Longbrake's/hardin Co. wetlands. We saw some ducks, not as many as Rick Counts reported but species wise pretty similar numbers, perhaps they were hiding on one of the ponds further back. The highlights were the lovely ducks, and the family group of Tundra Swans that were there, two adults and 3 juveniles, then Finally as were were leaving along the drainage ditch we flushed an AMERICAN BITTERN and it flew up right in front of us and then flew around us to one side and on up towards the embankment of the wetlands where it landed in the grasses opposite the water (on the other side of the embankment). We also ran the gauntlet as some crazed deer ran right at us and then infront of us. Still I'll take that instead of the Skunk I encountered last time. List: AMERICAN BITTERN - 1 - good spotting Jack Stenger! Great Blue Heron - 1 Ring-necked Duck - 1 female N. Pintail - 4 Ruddy Duck - 4 GW Teal - 20+ Lesser Scaup - 1 Gadwall - 40ish Am. Black Duck - 5+ Mallards N. Shoveler - 5+ P.B. Grebe - 1 Am. Coot - 100 Tundra Swan - 5 Killdeer - 1 Ring-billed Gull - 2 Herring Gull - 1 Bonaparte's Gull - 3 E. Meadowlark - 12 Lapland Longspur - 40+ fly-overs and then we saw a huge flock that I thought looked like Longspurs way out there, w/ Pippits mixed Horned Lark - 10+ flyovers Am. Tree Sparrow - 3 Song Sparrow - 4 Swamp Sparrow - 4 Am. Kestrel - 2 N. Harrier - 4 or so etc. We then hit some spots around Killdeer Plains W.A. list of rememberables follows. We did see some neat behavior from a family of Red-Headed Woodpeckers near that pond that has the dead trees in it, they were in the woodlot to the west and seemed to be near a nest tree, as they were dive-bombing a Fox Squirrel that was getting too close to it. It was a whole family group of Red-headeds, 2 adults and a Juvenile. Doug Overacker told me his party saw a couple Snow geese on a flooded field but we drove the road by it and found nothing :( oh well. Tundra Swans - 33 on pond 27, west side of dike Trump Swams - 2 Am. Widgeon - plenty Gadwall GW Teal Am. Black Ducks Mallards Ruddy Ducks Hooded Mergansers - 4 Pied Billed Grebes - 14+ an uncommon large group of them on pond 3 Coot - 100+ Common Loon - 1 on upground Resevoir (no black Scoters) Red-headed Woodpecker - 3 Downy Woodpecker - 1 Hairy Woodpecker - 1 heard? maybe N. Flicker - 3 Red-bellied Woodpecker - 4 Am. Tree Sparrow - 4 White-crowned Sparrow - 1 juv. Junco's - lots Song Sparrows N. Mockingbird - 1 Am. Kestrel - 5 Red-tailed - 5+ Bald Eagle - 2 GBH Killdeer - 6 Dunlin - 10? saw a good sized flock of gray backed shore- birds fly over pond 27 Mo. Doves etc. So anywho it was a fun day. It was also nice to see other birders out there attempting to out-number the deer hunters. It was good meeting/seeing Jay Lehman, Doug Overacker, Kenn and Kim Kaufman, et.al. out there, thanks for sharing some bird notes with us. Here's hoping for a Northern Shrike tomorrow morn. Happy Birding everyone, - Ben Warner ________________________________________________________________________ Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more. ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. 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]