This morning Adam Cirone, Bill Heck and I ventured into the last areas of my Prothonotary Warbler nest box trail at the Hoover Nature Preserve. I have nest boxes in three niches at Twin Bridges and we had to play Mountain Goat/Water Buffalo to get to the 18 nest boxes. I wish I could say that we saved the best for last, but the nest boxes really took a hit here. Nine out of eighteen nest boxes were utterly destroyed. The rate at which fallen trees made direct hits on the nest boxes made me wonder if Mother Nature was having target practice. Five of the Nine surviving nest boxes had Prothonotary Warbler nests in them, although one nest had six unhatched eggs. I would like to hope that the other nine nest boxes were used at the same rate, but there wasn't enough left of the boxes to even guess. I'm just thankful that this storm was after the nesting season and after the birds had already headed for their wintering grounds in Central and South America. As the three of us played FEMA, evaluating the devastation to the trees and nests boxes, we gathered and removed about 40 gallons of trash and hauled it out to the trash cans in the parking area. A gift for the Water Rangers to pick up. Along the way both Adam and Bill managed to find a spot to sink knee deep in mud. I didn't laugh though as every year I managed to go down like a frog in a biology class at least once ( the reason I keep an old U.S. Army blanket in my car trunk). We did some birding as we worked, although our observations were minimal at Twin Bridges where we saw Wood Ducks, Blue-winged Teal, Semipalmated Plover, Pileated Woodpecker, Swainson's Thrush and Yellow-rumped Warbler. Later we made a stop at Hoover Meadows and observed Chimney Swifts, Eastern Wood Pewee, Eastern Phoebe, good numbers of Eastern Bluebirds, Gray Catbird, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Ovenbird, Palm Warbler, Eastern Towhee, Field Sparrow, Swamp Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow and a 1st year Rose-breasted Grosbeak. This completed the circuit of the nest box trail and the 2008 tally appears to be 185 Prothonotary Warbler territories. I've begun preparing a spreadsheet of their distribution by area which I hope to post soon. Charlie Bombaci Hoover Nature Preserve **************Looking for simple solutions to your real-life financial challenges? Check out WalletPop for the latest news and information, tips and calculators. (http://www.walletpop.com/?NCID=emlcntuswall00000001) ______________________________________________________________________ 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]