I took a young friend down to the Cleveland Lakefront this morning (7 December) (nothing like introducing a teenager to the wild side of birding!). It was downright frigid, with 30 knot north winds, and this was an introductory trip for my friend. In spite of the weather we did manage to catch a quick glimpse of the Short-eared Owl at the west end of Burke Lakefront Airport. At East 55th, we spotted a Canvasback, a nice male Bufflehead, a handful of Gadwall, and a couple of Great Black-backed Gulls among the myriad Ring-billed gulls, scattered Herring Gulls, Canada Geese, Mallards, and American Coot. My main reason for this post, though, is to make folks aware of a very disturbing thing that we saw as we left East 55th Street. We had driven down to the northwest part of the parking lot and had spent 15 or 20 minutes looking at the ducks and gulls in the boat harbor from the northwest corner of the parking area. As we drove back through the parking area, we saw that while we were there someone had evidently driven full speed through a flock of Ring-billed Gulls sitting on the lot. There were 20 or more (I did not count) dead birds along two parallel tire track marks. A police car was right there (in fact, our first reaction was that he had driven through gulls), but there wasn't another vehicle close by. I hope that I don't start an uproar by posting this, since it won't accomplish much. However, I wanted to make folks aware that this had happened so that they could keep an eye open for any repeat occurrences, on the off chance that we might help catch the perpetrator. Good Birding. Laura Gooch Cleveland Heights ______________________________________________________________________ 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]