I spent about 4 hours wandering the trails of Sharon Woods Metro Park in Columbus yesterday morning, looking for early breeders (I managed to get the atlas block containing this metropark last August, after observing for a couple months that no one had signed up for it). I was mainly looking for breeding behavior of "safe-date" species, but was very pleasantly surprised to confirm breeding behavior in the form of nest building for American Robin and Eastern Phoebe. Notes of interest: Field Sparrows are out in force, with at least two or more in every suitable open field. Northern Flickers were everywhere it seemed, with numerous pairs observed. I had a Red-Bellied Woodpecker drumming after a second one began calling. Otherwise, not much action on the woodpecker front. Tree Swallows are sitting on the nest boxes but I observed no other possible breeding behavior. I did observe a male bluebird seemingly chase off a Tree Swallow from a nestbox. On the Oak Openings trail, I saw a hawk fly away from me in the pine stand, and to my surprise, as it began calling, it clearly turned out to be a Sharp-Shinned Hawk! I in fact observed two hawks here, both with many trees between me and the hawks so I never got a good look - so I won't claim both were Sharpies. Both were accipters, so I'm thinking that a Cooper's Hawk may have spooked or chased the Sharpie. However, I will keep my fingers crossed hard that there's a pair here (one can always hope). I also had what I'm pretty sure was a Louisiana Waterthrush calling on the Spring Creek Trail, but I'm not 100% confident of that. Schrock Lake didn't have much, but there was a pair of Ruddy Ducks, a pair of Bufflehead, five Ring-Necked Ducks and two pairs of Pied-Billed Grebes. After atlasing, I went over to Glacier Ridge Metro Park west of Dublin (take the Post Road exit off of SR 161and follow the signs) to see if I couldn't find a couple of the snipe reported there last week. Looks like pretty good shorebird habitat, but the only shorebirds there I could find were Killdeer and four Wilson's Snipe huddled together. A treat was the flock of Bonaparte's Gulls, many in breeding plumage with black heads (first time I've seen this for the species). 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]