Reading over Bill's musings on the change in the composition of Ohio's winter bird population, one factor should be immediately obvious for many of the species that changed from the early part of the twentieth century to today, the early part of the twenty-first century, and that of course is habitat change. Ohio has become increasingly more urban and developed, which explains the increase in birds that are adapted to these modern human environments (starling, house sparrow), as well as the birds that have become adapted to these environments (mourning dove, mallard, ring-billed gull). Other changes in populations have to do with increase in average temperatures over the last hundred years. What I find truly intriguing are the reports on the relative scarcity of birds like Red-Breasted Mergansers and Greater Black-Backed Gulls in the early reports. Where were the mergansers in the 1930s compared with the thousands upon thousands along Lake Erie today (perhaps the species is composed of Browns fans...)? Another thing that I have to wonder about is the abundance of Black-Capped Chickadees - were they really all that common, or does the number also include Carolina Chickadees as well? Andrew R. Sewell, MS, RPA Principal Investigator Historical/Industrial Archaeology Hardlines Design Company 4608 Indianola Avenue Columbus, Ohio 43214 ph. (614)-784-8733 fax (614)-784-9336 ________________________________ This mailbox protected from junk email by MailFrontier Desktop from MailFrontier, Inc. http://info.mailfrontier.com ______________________________________________________________________ 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]