Ransome Williams and I took advantage of this morning's great weather to look for shorebirds and other visitors at the Hoover Nature Preserve. Immediately upon arriving at Area M we were greeted by the little blue heron. It stayed close to the boardwalk the entire time we were there. The only time it got jumpy was when the immature bald eagle buzzed the mudflats sending everything scurrying for a short while. Once things settled down the shorebirds got back to feeding and we were able to identify 10 species before everything again got uneasy. This time we were treated to a fly over by a merlin. The osprey sat in the trees through all this without so much as paying attention to the ruckus. The species of interest at the Area M boardwalk included: Double-crested Cormorant (20+) Great Blue Heron (27) Great Egret (1) Little Blue Heron (1) Green Heron (4) Blue-winged Teal (4) Osprey (3) Bald Eagle (1) Red-tailed Hawk (1) Merlin (1) Semipalmated Plover (17) Killdeer (100+) Greater Yellowlegs (6) Lesser Yellowlegs (22) Solitary Sandpiper (1) Spotted Sandpiper (18) Semipalmated Sandpiper (50+) Least Sandpiper (100+) Pectoral Sandpiper (15) Next we checked out the northeast shore mudflats near Pelican Island. There were multiply immature bald eagles soaring about and while there the merlin flew in from the north. The sand spits had about 15 Caspian terns. The mudflats had much the same variety of shorebirds. Species at this area included: Double-crested Cormorant (3) Great Blue Heron (38) Green Heron (1) Osprey (1) Bald Eagle (2-3) Merlin (1) Semipalmated Plover (23) Killdeer (100+) Greater Yellowlegs (7) Lesser Yellowlegs (16) Solitary Sandpiper (2) Spotted Sandpiper (20) Semipalmated Sandpiper (30+) Least Sandpiper (20+) Pectoral Sandpiper (14) Caspian Tern (15) Charlie Bombaci Hoover Nature Preserve Delorme 58 C (2) & (3) ************************************** Get a sneak peek 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]