Has anyone ever birded the Charlemont Reservation in southwestern Lorain County? I had the privilege of birding this great area during January for the Ohio Winter Bird Atlas and just recently, Ethan Kistler found a pair of CLAY-COLORED SPARROWS here while conducting point count surveys for the Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas II. Follow up surveys yesterday revealed several other interesting species at the preserve in addition to the persistence of a singing Clay-colored Sparrow in the same location where Ethan had the birds a week before. What about the Blues Creek Preserve in western Delaware County? Yet another fantastic birding location! Unfortunately, these interesting preserves aren't even marked in the new edition of the DeLorme Gazetteer. You may find some marked on internet sites like Google Maps (like the Charlemont Reservation) or you may not (as is the case for Blues Creek Preserve). Regardless, these under-birded or non-birded publicly accessible sites may be harboring some really fantastic birds! If you're interested in exploring more of this great state and the enormous wealth of birding possibilities that it harbors, here are a few tips that I have found quite useful: #1 - contact the county engineer's office for the particular county you're interested in exploring further. These offices usually make folded county maps available free of charge. Most of the time, these maps show incredible detail that a map resource such as the DeLorme Gazeetteer could never capture. #2 - do a Google search for the county of interest while including other key words such as conservation, metropark, preserves, etc. You may come up with websites such as that for Delaware County Preservation Parks (http://www.preservationparks.com/parks.asp), which shows their array of parks spread across the county. #3 - visit the Department of Natural Areas & Preserves website (http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Default.aspx?alias=www.dnr.state.oh.us/dnap). This site lists all the State Nature Preserves on one map with each being hyperlinked to more details for each preserve. #4 - ODNR Wildlife Areas - (http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Home/wild_resourcessubhomepage/WildlifeAreaMapsLandingPage/tabid/19694/Default.aspx) each of the dozens of state wildlife areas have printable PDF maps that are incredibly useful. In terms of atlasing, it's often a challenge to gain access to certain areas of a particular Atlas block. Since the vast majority of Ohio is privately owned, it's always nice to be able to roam an area on foot as opposed to drive-by birding. I encourage everyone to explore some of the little known areas of Ohio. You'll probably find some fantastic preserves out there and many of these areas are most certainly in Atlas blocks with no data. Good birding! -- 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]