I had an opportunity to visit the Conneaut sandspit yesterday afternoon at about 3PM. It was raining pretty hard. In my opinion, this is the best time to bird here this time of year; you normally have the beach to yourself in the rain! Here are the highlights: Caspian Tern 35+ Forster's Tern 16+ Resting on the sand, no vocalizations, tails projecting past wings Dunlin 5 All in near breeding plumage Lesser Yellowlegs 3 Northern Pintail 1 male American Widgeon 1 pair Blue-winged Teal 2 pair Red-breasted Merganser 2 female Bonaparte's Gull 22+ Black-crowned Night-Heron 4 adults Great Black-backed Gull 30+ All stages of plumage Belted Kingfisher 1 Craig Holt and I had a chance to visit. He was leaving as I was arriving. He reported seeing a Lesser Black-backed Gull earlier. Bob Lane Damascus, Mahoning County _________________________________________________________________ Make Windows Vista more reliable and secure with Windows Vista Service Pack 1. http://www.windowsvista.com/SP1?WT.mc_id=hotmailvistasp1banner ______________________________________________________________________ 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]