I went out to the Caesar Creek Visitors Center this morning to seek the Common Redpoll reported there yesterday by Rick Asamoto and Shaun Eggleston and readily found it with a helping hand from a nice couple who were already there. The bird was coming to the feeder out back. The people who were there before me had seen it on the feeder, but every time I saw it it was in the company of a flock of goldfinches foraging in the detritus on the ground under the feeder. The usual drill was that the birds would gather in the trees above the feeder, then descend to the ground and feed for five to ten minutes. Then the whole flock would suddenly fly away. In about fifteen minutes the whole process would start again. I sat through about four cycles of this. The redpoll was noticeably larger than the goldfinches. The most obvious field mark was the red cap that gives the species its vernacular name. The black face, big white wingbar, pinkish-red wash on the breast, and striped flanks completed the identification. I took up a position on one of the benches outside. The birds quickly became desensitized to my presence and I was able to shoot a bunch of pictures. I will put the best of them on my blog tonight. (URL below in my sig.) This wonderful find followed on the heels of a great morning at Hoover yesterday with my son Hugh, a science writer at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, looking at the Black-legged Kittiwake. I fear I have run through a whole year's worth of luck in the first few days of the year. An interactive map of the Caesar Creek area can be found here<http://tinyurl.com/CaesarCreek> . Cheers, Bob -- Robert D Powell Wilmington, OH, USA [log in to unmask] http://rdp1710.wordpress.com Nulla dies sine linea ______________________________________________________________________ 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]