Please read here about the importance of negative data if you looked for rusty blackbirds. My thanks to Aaron Boone, Project Coordinator, Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas II for reminding me of negative data entry. All of you Rusty Blackbird chasers should enter your negative data, too! It works like this: You drive fifty miles to Island Road in Pickaway County because you think there may be rusties there. You arrive and begin birding at the creek crossing west of Route 50. You proceed slowly, scanning for blackbirds. You find a few individual red-wings, then a flock and chase it along treelines along Island Road. You spend thirty minutes getting a good count of all blackbirds and starlings in the flock. You list all other bird species seen during the search, too (or not). You find three thousand mixed "blackbirds" (including 2800 starlings--non-native, not in blackbird family, but ubiquitous (counting starlings is a way to search for blackbirds)), but no rusties. You drove 0.75 miles during the search. Very briefly, Go to eBird: Enter the search location (Use map feature to find location). Enter the date: ? Enter the search miles: 0.75 (don't report the total travel miles) Enter the start time and total time: 35 minutes Enter the number of each "blackbird" species found including a zero for each species not found (numbers of sexes, rusty males and females and male and female red-wings, too, if you have it) In the notes section, describe the weather and habitat plus the behaviors of the blackbirds (lots of details for rusties). List all species seen if you kept a list of those, too. Negative data is very important if you made a careful search for rusties. Now, go find those owls for the Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas II project. Great Horned Owls and Barred Owls are already active and within safe dates. Everyone can and should contribute! Aaron posted several reminders recently. Watch for Aaron's future posts. Be a part of the Atlas! This from Aaron, posted February 2: "In particular, we really need additional help in trying to document nocturnal species like Great Horned Owls and Barred Owls (safe dates began on February 1st). Great Horned Owls are especially vocal right now. I sometimes find it very difficult to detect Great Horned Owls during the summer months when the majority of atlasing activities are taking place. And this species tends to not be as responsive to tape playback as are other owls (like Barred or Eastern Screech-Owls). Our current lack of detections for some nocturnal species may simply be the result of a lack of appropriately allocated effort. For optimum survey results, try to select nights that are clear & calm...noise from excessive wind can make it terribly difficult to hear calling owls. Also, there are results from research that indicate that moon-phase plays an important role in call-frequency of owls. However, other research indicates that it's less important. Moon-phase may or may not play a factor in owl call frequency in Ohio but for those that are curious, the next full moon is on February 8th. Typically, owl survey protocols recommend that you conduct surveys 1 hour after sunset and before midnight but birds can also be very vocal just before dawn. Please consider making an effort to track down some of these fascinating birds. Please contact me for advice on looking for owls or appropriate areas that still need survey coverage. Good birding!" Tom Bain Ohio Coordinator, Rusty Blackbird Hotspot Blitz Ohio Ornithological Society Conservation Committee ______________________________________________________________________ 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]