Yesterday I spent some time cruising the roads near the Croton egg farms. Horned larks were abundant, and I did find one small "flock" of maybe 12 longspurs along Tagg Road. However, the nemesis snow bunting continues to elude me. However, as I drove past some sort of drainage ditch, seven mallards rose up in a flurry, and that got me to thinking about other small wet areas that might be open and hold waterfowl. So, this afternoon, I set out in search of waterfowl, with the following results: The quarries to which I have access were all frozen over. The Evans Park, off Route 13 north of Newark held some Canadas and mallards, and a few feral barnyard varieties, but nothing else. The river above the waterworks low dam, along Horns Hill Road, held more Canadas, mallards, and one very cold-looking great blue heron. I did stop at the little church parking lot on Cedar Run Road and study the heronry which is on the Owens Corning property but viewable from where I stopped. I was not able to spot any birds there yet. I hit paydirt however, at a small wetland between Route 16 and the railroad track just west of the intersection with Route 668 - Brownsville Road. Here I found: A pair of hooded mergansers 2 pairs of redheads A male shoveler A pair of ring-necked ducks Several Canadas A belted kingfisher! I then drove some of the back roads that more or less follow the river, without much success. However, in one of the large overhead flights of Canadas, a single white-phase snow goose stood out. Later I decided to brave the ice and take my "birding dog" for some exercise along the Black Hand Gorge bike trail, western end. It turned out to be about the unbirdiest I have ever seen along that trail, with two rather startling exceptions: At the big bend in the river, which some of us now refer to as the eagle pool, there was a single male lesser scaup and a single male ruddy duck. Speaking of eagles, from the trail, I was able to see both the male and the female near the nest, although neither was actually on the nest. They were right beside each other on a sturdy limb, a few feet from the actual nest. I also spotted my first sharp-shinned hawk of the year near the east entrance to Black Hand Gorge, as well as an expected brown creeper. All in all, not a bad weekend of birding, for February, even though I whiffed on woodpeckers and kinglets. Margaret Bowman Licking Co., OH ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. 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]