Hi Everyone, 160,000 breeding bird observations and counting! That's the recent approximation from the online database. This 3rd season of the Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas II is turning up some great stuff! We can't thank all of you enough for your extremely valuable contributions to this project. There's still plenty that needs to be done and there's still plenty of opportunity left this season to get out there and help put the nesting birds of Ohio on the map. July is a great month to be out in the field. Despite the increase in average temps, this is a very productive time for getting new species in blocks and increasing the number of breeding confirmations for a block. There are fledglings all over the place and adults can easily be seen carrying food items or fecal sacs. As many of you are probably discovering right now, 2-3 well-placed hours of effort can frequently net 50+ species for a block. A colleague and I hit an un-surveyed priority block yesterday in Region 39. In roughly 3 hours, we ticked 58 species with about 20% of those being confirmed as nesting. It's a great time of the year to be birding in Ohio! Aaron Boone Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas II School of Environment & Natural Resources The Ohio State University 210 Kottman Hall 2021 Coffey Road Columbus, OH 43210-1085 614.247.6458 (office) www.ohiobirds.org/obba2/ ______________________________________________________________________ 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]