John Habig and I and his son, John, arrived at Avon Lake between 9:00 and 9:15 am Saturday morning, 12/20/08. There was a Peregrine Falcon on the top rail of one of the stacks at the power plant. At that time the flocks of gulls were not very close to the fishing pier. Between 9:30 and 10:00 am, the Pomarine Jaeger appeared chasing the gulls off the water into enormous swirling flocks. While we were there, the Pomarine Jaeger made at least two passes very close to the fishing pier, at least once right over-head, and also landed on the water quite close for great spotting scope views. I tried a lot of photographs but the light was very poor. It was cloudy, dim and snowing lightly with very fine flakes. The western most parking area at Miller Park was quite dangerous and covered with ice, so extreme caution was required. We headed east toward E 72nd Street and encountered three accidents on I90/Rt 2. It was treacherous driving with glassy sections especially on the bridges, but some people apparently needed to go fast! On the way east, we stopped at Lakeland Cemetery and slowly drove through looking for winter finches, but found none. There are fruiting trees in the cemetery but without any feeding flocks of Robins or waxwings while we were there. In Avon Lake, there were several locations near the power plant with heavily laden fruit trees with flocks of feeding American Robins. The closer we got to downtown Cleveland and E 72nd Street, the weather got better with less snow and small patches of blue sky showing occasionally. We tried for the Snowy Owl at Burke Airport on the way to E 72nd Street, but did not find a Snowy Owl. We spent several hours scanning the large number of gulls at E. 72nd Street. We found Iceland Gull, Glaucous Gull, both 1rst year birds, one Lesser Black -backed Gull, winter plumage adult, as well as the usual suspects, Ring-billed, Herring, Great Black-backed, and Bonaparte's Gulls. We looked hard for other rare gulls, particularly through the large flock of Bonaparte's Gull sitting on the water, but had no success. We also found the reported Long-tailed Ducks at Gordon Park at the marina, but we saw only two of the three previously reported Saturday while we were there. In the pines near the Ranger Station east of the marina, we found the previously reported Northern Saw-whet Owl. We tried again at Burke Airport for Snowy Owl, but did find either the adult or the immature Snowy Owl previously reported. We searched hard at Gate 9 and further east to Gate 13. At 3:30 pm, we headed south, not wanting to risk the bad weather predicted for later Saturday. We arrived safely in Cincinnati with no snow or ice on the road on the way south, but with a few wet snow flacks just starting to fall in Cincinnati. Jay Jay G. Lehman Cincinnati, OH [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]