Anybody who thinks birding is for wimps wasn't with the intrepid group who attended the Dawes Arboretum "wetlands" tour today. Birds sighted between blizzard white-outs, including a quick stop at the visitors' center to thaw out: Canada goose Wood duck Green-winged teal Mallard Blue-winged teal Northern shoveler Bufflehead (single female) Hooded merganser Common merganser Turkey vulture Killdeer Wilson's snipe Mourning dove (at feeders) Red-bellied woodpecker (at feeders) Downy woodpecker (at feeders) Northern rough-winged swallow (2, over wetlands) Brown thrasher (at feeders) Carolina chickadee (at feeders) Tufted titmouse (at feeders) White-breasted nuthatch (at feeders) Blue jay (at feeders) American crow House finch (at feeders) American goldfinch (at feeders) Eastern towhee (at feeders) Chipping sparrow (at feeders) Song sparrow (both at wetlands and at feeders) White-throated sparrow (at feeders) Dark-eyed junco (at feeders) Northern cardinal (at feeders) Red-winged blackbirds (wetlands) Common grackles - everywhere! I learned a little of the history of the wetlands. One point of interest to me is that all highway construction in Ohio is required to "mitigate" for any wetlands habitat that is destroyed. (I wasn't aware of this.) In Licking Co., there were several small patches of wetlands in the path of the Route 161/37 construction. Part of the Dawes wetland is the ODOT mitigation for those lost wetlands. In my personal opinion, the waterfowl really got the best of this deal. The Dawes wetland is much more amenable to waterfowl than any of the small areas I have seen along the old Route 161 corridor. And it was a win-win situation. Dawes had the land, but not the funding to create the wetlands. ODOT would have been required to obtain land, had not the Dawes land been available for creation of wetlands. Cold day, but good companionship and good birding warm the heart! Thanks to Lori and the Arboretum staff for making this event possible. Margaret Bowman ______________________________________________________________________ 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]