A group of 5 went birding around Deer Creek Reservoir this morning. It was cold and rainy at first and cold and less rainy later. Some of the best birding of the day was during lunch at the lodge overlooking the lake. There was a merlin sitting on the top of an tree near the entrance. As we walked in a mature bald eagle flew by the windows that overlook the lake. When we sat down for at our table we saw a pair of common mergansers on the lake. At that point we started wondering why we had spent the morning out in the rain. Here's the list of what we saw, to the best of my recollection... Canada Goose 25 Gadwall 1 American Wigeon 1 American Black Duck 7 Mallard 200 Lesser Scaup 1 Surf Scoter 1 Hooded Merganser 30 Common Merganser 2 Red-breasted Merganser 10 Pied-billed Grebe 1 Horned Grebe 9 Great Blue Heron 2 Black Vulture 4 Bald Eagle 2 Red-tailed Hawk 3 Merlin 1 Bonaparte's Gull 2 Ring-billed Gull 50 Herring Gull 2 Mourning Dove 2 Belted Kingfisher 1 Red-bellied Woodpecker 1 Downy Woodpecker 2 Blue Jay 2 American Crow 50 White-breasted Nuthatch 1 Ruby-crowned Kinglet 1 American Robin 10 European Starling 100 Song Sparrow 1 White-throated Sparrow 2 Dark-eyed Junco 5 Northern Cardinal 2 House Sparrow 1 Steve Wolfe Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ 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]