There's some interesting birding to be found by poking around the enormous Deer Creek Wildlife Area in Pickaway and Fayette Counties. I spent a short while this afternoon checking a small part of it. In the middle wetland tract north of New Holland there wasn't nearly as much much shorebird habitat as last year at this time, just a bit on the eastern edge. That area hosted many Killdeers, 4 Gr Yellowlegs, ~40 L Yellowlegs, ~20 Pectoral Sandpipers, and 2 (that I could see) Least Sandpipers. Also in that area were 2 imm. Bald Eagles. I bushwhacked my way around the southern wetland tract, and the fields were swarming with flocking birds. Notable were ~100 Field Sparrows, ~150 Savannah Sparrows, several Henslow's Sparrows, and ~ 75 Bobolinks with probably more stuff hunkered down because of the wind. Henslow's nested there this year, but I have no idea if the birds there today were migrants. I would think that area would be a great place to regularly check over the course of the next month for migrant Ammodramus sparrows. I took a quick peek at the State Park beach and counted 81 Killdeers, 1 Sanderling, ~300 R-b Gulls, and 4 Herring Gulls. A Merlin flew out a scattered all the birds while I was there (including the gulls). The reservoir is still at full capacity, but I believe they start drawing it down on Oct 1. Bob Royse Robert Royse [log in to unmask] www.roysephotos.com ______________________________________________________________________ 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]