Four of us trod mostly untrodden tracks to day looking for birds. Sheldon Marsh still harbored the American bittern in the aforementioned spot. We had a common yellowthroat there as well. No owls in the woods as far as we could tell. The Cedar Pt Chaussee nearby looked great for birds that left two-three months ago, but otherwise had a few hundred gulls, with Canada geese and a few dozen tundra swans. Medusa Marsh had the day's best waterfowl variety, where we added Am wigeon, gadwall, black duck, mallard, n. shoveler, pintail, and hooded and common mergansers in good numbers. The Bay View bridge hosted a couple of snow buntings on the eastern stub, a sharp-shinned hawk, many ruddy ducks, and thousands of actively feeding gulls. The weather grew colder than predicted at East Harbor St Park, and birds were few. Rafts of beautiful common mergansers adorned the lagoons here though, and several other inland impoundments later during the day. Rafts of several thousand scaup sp. swirled and rested offshore. Not much was happening at Magee Marsh, but in the long 4+-mile hike to the Crane Creek Estuary and back at Ottawa NWR we had our best birding. Few intriguing birds were seen in the impoundments on the way out and back, but in the less-confined waters of the estuary we found 519 talking tundra swans, 39 snow geese, four greater white-fronted geese, perhaps 5000 Canada geese (no cackling geese discerned), and a few ducks, mostly mallards, plus the usual gull spp. We arrived late enough to hear only reports of northern shrikes at both Magee and Ottawa. With sunny skies and temps in the 40s, the bird spectacle was a treat. These swans and geese are likely to stick around, and it's a grand show. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ 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]