Today Bill & Mary Heck and I surveyed several areas of the preserve for activity. The day began unseasonably cold and only gradually got comfortable for both the birds and us. While Bill and I concentrated more on the birds, Mary enjoyed more diversity as she also took in the flowers and butterflies c urrently present at the preserve. While the activity was slower than past days, it picked up and we had a reasonable day. My highlight was the arrival of the first female Prothonotary Warblers. Our day began with a male Prothonotary Warbler greeting us by perching in the sunlight and belting away his song (he knew the ladies were back), and ended with a Cooper's Hawk plucking the feathers off an American Robin it had caught. Our species for the day include: Double-crested Cormorant Great Blue Heron Green Heron Turkey Vulture Canada Goose Wood Duck Mallard Ruddy Duck (Drake and Hen - very late for species in this area) Osprey Cooper's Hawk Red-tailed Hawk Ring-billed Gull Mourning Dove Chimney Swift Belted Kingfisher Red-headed Woodpecker Red-bellied Woodpecker Downy Woodpecker Northern Flicker Eastern Phoebe Great Crested Flycatcher Blue Jay American Crow Tree Swallow Cliff swallow Barn Swallow Carolina Chickadee Tufted Titmouse Red-breasted Nuthatch White-breasted Nuthatch Brown Creeper Carolina Wren Blue-gray Gnatcatcher American Robin Gray Catbird Brown Thrasher European Starling Northern Parula Yellow-rumped Warbler Black-throated Green Warbler Palm Warbler Prothonotary Warbler Eastern Towhee Chipping Sparrow Song Sparrow Northern Cardinal Red-winged Blackbird Common Grackle Brown-headed Cowbird Baltimore Oriole American Goldfinch House Sparrow Charlie Bombaci Hoover Nature Preserve Delorme 58 C (2) & (3) **************Need a new ride? Check out the largest site for U.S. used car listings at AOL Autos. (http://autos.aol.com/used?NCID=aolcmp00300000002851) ______________________________________________________________________ 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]