The Early Morning Discovery Hike this morning at Shawnee Prairie Preserve outside of Greenville was sparsely populated due to the COLD weather, BUT we still came away with 33 spp! Most notable would be the 2 Wild Turkeys(hens?) spotted in a neighboring field! In addition, we had a Blue-headed Vireo and a Black-and-White Warbler grace us with their presence, if only for a few short minutes. Also, saw a male Indigo Bunting (a first for the year). Also included in this email is the eBird report for a hike that another Naturalist and I took YESTERDAY, April 28th. We had a few warblers, including a Common Yellowthroat, a Palm Warbler and a Yellow Warbler...also spotted a Solitary Sandpiper at the old "clay pits"...but the BEST BY FAR was the Gray-cheeked Thrush!! After getting several GOOD looks at it, and checking through all of the bird guides we could find, we came to the conclusion that is what we spotted. Very good find indeed =D Below you will find first the abridged list from April 28...and then an abridged list from this morning's hike. (sorry for the late post from yesterday...busy time of year) Location: DCP - Shawnee Prairie Preserve Observation date: 4/28/08 Notes: Grey-cheeked Thrush spotted at Mud Creek from the Bridge!! Number of species: 39 Wood Duck X Solitary Sandpiper 1 Hairy Woodpecker 1 Northern Flicker X Eastern Phoebe X House Wren X Ruby-crowned Kinglet 1 Blue-gray Gnatcatcher X Eastern Bluebird 2 Gray-cheeked Thrush 1 Gray Catbird 1 Yellow Warbler 1 Palm Warbler 1 Common Yellowthroat 1 Chipping Sparrow X Location: DCP - Shawnee Prairie Preserve Observation date: 4/29/08 Notes: EMDH - COLD (37) - Rained Overnight - Turkeys in the south field! Number of species: 33 Wild Turkey 2 Blue-headed Vireo 1 House Wren X Ruby-crowned Kinglet X Blue-gray Gnatcatcher X Eastern Bluebird 1 Gray Catbird X Black-and-white Warbler X Indigo Bunting 1 This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org) And of course 'All the Usuals' were also spotted =) -- Robb Clifford - Naturalist - Darke County Parks www.darkecountyparks.org "We need another and a wiser, and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken a form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth." -Outermost House by Henry Beston- ______________________________________________________________________ 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]