After several days doing volunteer work away from the preserve I got back to home base today. I did maintenance work on some of my Prothonotary Warbler nest boxes as I covered one of my blocks for the Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas project. As we enter mid-July the Prothonotary Warbler numbers have begun to decline rapidly as the adults begin their migration south. I did find several adults still feeding fledglings at both Wiese Road and Oxbow Road. In a back area of Oxbow Road I stumbled onto some very recently fledged Green Herons. With the pin feathers on their heads they looked like a retro to the heavy metal bands the kids used to play in the 80's. In the field to the south of Oxbow Road before the entrance to the preserve I observed an adult Eastern Meadowlark being pursued by fledglings that still wanted a free lunch. As July winds down, so does the activity for the atlas project. The songbird pursuit soon to be replaced by the shorebird pursuit. The water levels at the north end of Hoover Reservoir are currently down by about 5 ½ feet and mudflats are emerging everywhere. Although I only saw 5 species today, soon the variety and quantities will both increase. It should prove to be a good year to visit the boardwalk at Area M to view shorebirds without having to trudge through the mud as in past years. Species observed today include: Double-crested Cormorant Great Blue Heron Green Heron Canada Goose Mallard Turkey Vulture Osprey Bald eagle (1 adult) Red-tailed Hawk Killdeer Lesser Yellowlegs Spotted Sandpiper Semipalmated Sandpiper Least Sandpiper Ring-billed Gull Caspian Tern Morning Dove Chimney Swift Ruby-throated Hummingbird Belted Kingfisher Red-bellied Woodpecker Downy Woodpecker Northern Flicker Willow Flycatcher Great Crested Flycatcher Eastern Kingbird Tree Swallow Northern Rough-winged Swallow Bank Swallow Cliff Swallow Barn Swallow Blue Jay American Crow Carolina Chickadee Tufted Titmouse Carolina Wren House Wren Eastern Bluebird Wood Thrush American Robin Gray Catbird Northern Mockingbird Brown Thrasher Cedar Waxwing European Starling White-eyed Vireo Red-eyed Vireo Yellow Warbler Prothonotary Warbler Common Yellowthroat Northern Cardinal Indigo Bunting Song Sparrow Red-winged Blackbird Eastern Meadowlark Common Grackle Brown-headed Cowbird Baltimore Oriole American Goldfinch Charlie Bombaci Hoover Nature Preserve Delorme 58 C (2) & (3) ************************************** Get a sneak peak of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ______________________________________________________________________ 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]