I started late on Sunday morning at Germantown Metro Park looking for the Fox Sparrows previously reported by John Habig at the feeders. When I arrived, the windows area was blocked from 12:30 -2:00 pm for a bird photography class. So, I walked the trails, and within about 10 minutes I found a beautiful Fox Sparrow. I took the boardwalk left coming out of the Nature Center and continued left and uphill though the cedars until a small frozen pond. I found the Fox Sparrow in the undergrowth on the other side of the pond by skirting the pond on a trail along the downhill side of the pond and then back uphill to the left. Fox Sparrow is number 93. I was heading north to the lake for this long weekend, and decided to stop a few places north along the way. I stopped by Hoover Dam to look for the Ruby-crowned Kinglet reported on Saturday below the dam, but didn't find it. Then I stopped at Mud Hen Marsh, where a Ruby-crowned Kinglet had been seen as recently as 01/11/00. I walked the trail directly south from the parking lot. A short distance from the parking lot at a "T", a Ruby-crowned Kinglet came out of some snow covered bushed to my "spishing." Ruby-crowned Kinglet is number 94. After a quick swing around the feeders at the pit in Greenlawn Cemetery added no new species, I headed north to Cleveland to stay the night for lake front birding in the morning. At E. 72nd Street, I quickly added Herring Gull (95), Great Black-backed Gull (96), Glaucous Gull (97) and Iceland Gull (98). After about two hours watching gulls and after other birders started showing up, I found a Lesser Black-backed Gull (99). Later, a Thayer's Gull was being identified, and I thought that I had found number 100. However, I was not entirely satisfied, so I repaired to my van to warm up and checked my reference texts that I brought along (Olson and Larson; P. Grant). I realized that none of the first year birds I saw were definitive Thayer's Gulls. None had had the light brown solid centers on the tertials and the light brown tail of a first year Thayer's Gull. The brown of Thayer's is darker than that of first year Iceland but lighter than the dark brown primaries of first year Herring Gulls. The tertials and tails of all birds that I saw were mottled or checkered with light brown, which indicates Iceland/Kumlein's Gulls and not Thayer's. I didn't see a definitive Thayer's Gull. I needed a break from watching gulls so I checked out Burke Airport for the Snowy Owl, without success. Then I stopped by Eastlake Power Plant, but found a sizable flock of Canvasback, Redheads, both scaup, some Golden-eye and very few Red-breasted Mergansers. There were fewer gulls at Eastlake than at E. 72nd Street. I continued east and found Black-capped Chickadee (100) at a private feeder along the road near Mentor Marsh and not far from the entry road to Headland State Park. Then I headed west to check out Avon Lake Power Plant. The mix of birds at Avon Lake was about the same as that at Eastlake, so I returned to Burke Airport to look again for the Snowy Owl. I was not successful. I returned to E. 72nd Street for a short last look at gulls, and found Glaucous and Iceland readily, and a Lesser Black-backed Gull but no Thayer's, before it got too dark for gull watching. Oh well, there are still about eleven days left in January, and I did manage at least 100 birds for January in Ohio. This is the earliest in January that I have reached 100. 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]