Well, too bad I missed the King Eider action and AGAIN missed Purple Sandpipers although Dan Sanders and I did look for them at several stops along the lake west from Huron where we started out. There wasn't much at Huron, just saw a lot of Fly-by R.B. Mergansers and what seemed to be a wounded Black Duck. Duck hunters were out, and we saw some gulls, just Ring-billed, Herring, and Bonapartes, but not large numbers. We saw about 50 COMMON GOLDENEYE near Port Clinton I believe. We drove onward and checked out the fields around Metzger Marsh where we saw a few hundred Horned Larks and then about 6 Tundra Swans in the marsh area. Also a few Bald Eagles, plus some juv. Eagles out on the ice. Things really picked up when we decided to walk out the dikes to the estuary area and inlet to the lake at Ottawa. Getting out of the car we saw about a Hundred Tundra Swans fly by then when we walked further out we had some fly right over head and lit up by the evening sun they were a lovely sight, honking away as they went. There were Hundreds of Canada's out there too. Then a white Helicopter flew by over the marsh and got up some geese and ducks. Lots of Mallards and then we noticed a different looking flock, scanning with Bino's we could see some white snow-geese in the large group. Yes! that was a target bird for us there. I got the scope on them and took a closer look at the flying flock of 50 birds to discover that They were all SNOW GEESE with a lot of Blue phase birds. I counted 50 birds in the flock, pretty sweet. Then a bird flew by and it caught my eye as being a bit differently shaped, luckily it landed down near the dike in some trees (Near the viewing platform on the first E/West perpendicular dike you come to as you walk straight out from the parking lot at the Headquarters brown house) and I could clearly see in the scope that it was a NORTHERN SHRIKE. A very nice looking bird, we watched it dive at something inthe grass and then fly to the other side of the dike and perch on a stake. Very nice in the sunlight at 4:00 pm. As we hiked out further we found a lot of frozen water, AMERICAN TREE SPARROWS everywhere, Downy Woodpeckers, and about another Hundred lovely TUNDRA SWANs. On one section we had all of a Group of Tundras, then 2 Trumpeter Swans, and next 5 Mute Swans, for a nice size comparison. We could see leg bands on the Trumpeters. On the way thru we also saw Muskrat, O'Possum, White-tailed Deer, and some more Mallards, Can.Go.'s, and Black Ducks. We had several BALD EAGLE adults fly by close and also some RED-Tailed HAWKS, and NORTHERN HARRIERS (2) fly past. We had about 15 GREAT BLUE HERONS, and on the way out we heard a GREAT HORNED OWL hootin'. What a beautiful sunset it was and especially enhanced by the continued presense of fly over Tundra Swans as we walked. Lovely day, Good birding, and yes, I finally did see that WESTERN TANAGER yesterday morning. Good stuff. - 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]