Hi Everyone, Beth and I went down to the lakefront this morning to see if we could see the recently-reported Red-throated Loon. No luck, but we saw some nice birds. We got to the turning basin west of Dike 14 at about 10 AM, and spent the next two hours on the lake. It was pretty cold, very gray and blustery, raining off and on. When we got to the basin, we saw a couple of birds that we thought at first were horned grebes. But there were a couple of things wrong: much larger bill, with a lot of yellow; too many marks in the face of one of the birds, including the crescent mark described in Peterson on one of the birds; and then we saw them next to a Red-breasted Merganserthey were about the same size. So we decided...Red-necked Grebes We had 8 or more Common Loons off the western end of Dike 14 Aside from the expected large numbers of Red-Breasted Mergansers, Bonapartešs Gulls and Ring-billed Gulls, the only other bird we had of interest on the East Side was a sub-adult Greater Black-backed Gull at the E. 55th Street Marina. At Edgewater Park there was a flock of 100 Canada Geese. Among them was one leucistic bird, and the Brant that had been reported earlier. Also, one American Black Duck among a mixed flock of Mallards and Ring-Bills on the beach. In general, the wind and rain seemed to keep land birds down. Herešs our list for the day: Common Loon- 12+ Red-necked Grebe- 2 Canada Goose- xxx Brant- 1 American Black Duck- 1 Mallard- xx Lesser Scaup- 2 Red-breasted Merganser- xxx American Coot- xx Bonaparte's Gull- xxx Ring-billed Gull- xxx Herring Gull- xx Great Black-backed Gull- 1 Rock Dove- xx House Sparrow- 4 Best wishes, Steve Cagan Cleveland Hts ----- Steve Cagan, photographer [log in to unmask] 216-932-2753 www.stevecagan.com www.pbase.com/stevecagan ______________________________________________________________________ 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]