Shane Egleston, Rick "Subway Scoter" Asamoto and I birded around Killdeer Plains and Oak Hill Cemetery today. We went to Oak Hill first arriving about 9:30 to look for the Crossbills. We thought we had some fly over but with the wind blowing so hard it was hard to be sure as we could not hear the calls. After about an hour and a half with no definite results we went over to the Upper Sandusky Reservoir to find the Cackling Geese that Eric (sorry forgot the last name) told us about while waiting for the crossbills to show up. We were able to find three Cackling Geese among the thousands of Canada Geese and Mallards. The Mallards were likely migrants as they were very skittish. We also saw Northern Pintail, American Black Duck and Ruddy Duck. There were also four immature Bald Eagles. While at the reservoir Eric came by and told us the crossbills showed up soon after we left so we went back over to Oak Hill. After about 20 minutes 9 White-wing Crossbills showed up and allowed us to watch them for over 30 minutes with great views. Four of them were males. There were no Red Crossbills mixed in. From there we went to Killdeer Plains. There was so much orange that it looked like a pumpkin patch so we didn't do any looking in the pine groves for Long-eared Owls (there were none in the traditional Cedar Tree along the road). We did find hundreds of Horned Larks and an equal number of Lapland Longspurs along Washburn Road. They actually came up to the gravel driveway to the new house there to get gravel affording us great looks. We then went looking for the Northern Shrike around pond 27 (?) with no success. We then went to look where Rick and Shane saw one earlier in the year near the intersection of 123 and 75. After about 20 minutes one showed up about 200 feet south of the intersection. It then flew to the northwest corner of the intersection and then back to the southeast so it must be hunting that area. We only saw two Northern Harriers and no Rough-legged Hawks. At 5:00 we found a Short-eared Owl at the sportsmen center. As we were leaving we found another one at the intersection of Road 71. John Habig 261 Lantis Dr. Carlisle, Ohio 45005 [log in to unmask] ______________________________________________________________________ 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]