Hi Everyone, Beth and I decided to take advantage of the open auto tour day at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge yesterday (Feb 17). There werenąt many birders there‹I guess the snow and the fact that all the water was frozen and fields were snow-covered might have warned saner birders off. We did manage to see some nice birds, though the snow kept us off the trails. Hereąs what we had: Canada Goose- 350 Tundra Swan- 25 Bald Eagle- 2 Northern Harrier- 5 American Kestrel- 2 Red-tailed Hawk- 3 Mourning Dove- 3 Northern Flicker- 1 Blue Jay- 4 American Robin- 2 European Starling- 25 American Tree Sparrow- 50 Song Sparrow- 5 Dark-eyed Junco- 4 Northern Cardinal- 12 House Sparrow- 35 Later we went over to Castalia to check out the ponds. We did pretty well there (for most of the awterfowl we canąt give numbers, as they kept moving back and forth, diving and mixing it up pretty well‹but there were hundred of ducks, if not more, in the ponds): Canada Goose Mute Swan- 3 Tundra Swan-2 Gadwall American Wigeon American Black Duck Mallard Northern Shoveler Canvasback Redhead Lesser Scaup- few Bufflehead-fewer than a dozen Common Goldeneye Hooded Merganser- 1 And this was an odd duck (so to speak :-) ) At least we think it was a Hooded Merganser. But: there was no white at all in the hood, and the flanks, rather than the warm brownish tone we would expect, were gray-colored. But the shape and size were perfect, the bill was a black merganser bill‹I donąt know what else it could have been... Ruddy Duck- 3 or 4 Ring-billed Gull- 4 Dark-eyed Junco- 5 On Route 2, at the Medusa ponds, we also had a group of 5-6 Great Blue Herons gathered around a little bit of open water Finally, we went back to Ottawa County, to the Lickert-Harder Road, where a group of Short-eared Owls had been seen the day before. We didnąt get them, but we did have two groups of Horned Larks on the sides of the roads, about 25-30 birds in all. We were able to get very close and had really good looks. 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. 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]