I visited Huffman Prairie late in the evening on June 18th. Good birds there, including Meadowlarks and Bobolinks aggressively defending their nest sites and lots of Common Yellowthroats. Other birders have reported Grasshopper Sparrows this year as well. Therefore, it was disappointing to discover on the evening of June 21st that the entire prairie was mowed. Looking at the Species Accounts of Ohio Breeding Birds (http://www.ohiobirds.org/obba2/pdfs/pdfselect.php), it is clear that we are still firmly in the active nesting season for all of these species, therefore this mowing operation most likely caused significant fledgeling and egg mortality for the Bobolinks, Yellowthroats, Meadowlarks and Grasshopper Sparrows out there. This land is managed by the United States Air Force, National Park Service and Nature Conservancy. I have written the Nature Conservancy to express my concern about this. We'll see where this leads. Sorry for the rant and negative post, but I couldn't hold in my disappointment about this issue. Good Birding, Greg Spahr Fairborn, OH ________________________________________________________________________ AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.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]