Yesterday I took a look at that map showing where W-w Crossbills have been seen in the state and noticed that none have been seen in the S central counties. That seemed mighty strange since there are plenty of hemlocks in those counties and crossbills are being seen in WV and KY. I headed down to the Shawnee SF this morning to have a look. At my first stop at some hemlocks along Pond Lick Run I found 4 WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILLS. But that was it for the day. I also looked around the state park campground and the northern part of the forest where there are more hemlocks. It was a cold and heavily overcast day there and birding in general was very quiet, so I didn't stay there long. I checked out Moore's Lane afterward and there is some good looking shorebird habitat where 9 Killdeers were present. I hope the condition there doesn't change in the next few months because they have been draining and plowing that area in recent years. On the way back I looked through some hemlocks at Scioto Trail in Ross County which also surprisingly has no crossbill reports yet, but I had no success. It too was very quiet and I didn't stay there long. Back home in Columbus this afternoon there was a nice assortment and number of ducks in my backyard stretch of the Scioto River including : 1 Wood Duck ~200 Ring-necked Ducks ~20 Redheads ~10 Canvasbacks ~30 Hooded Mergansers 4 Buffleheads ~20 Common Goldeneyes This evening I headed back to the McKinley Quarry. 30 or so Great Blue Herons were on their nests (none were there 2 days ago). The huge blackbird flocks were mostly congregated at the inaccessible far side of the quarry where the could only be seen as distant silhouettes. I did manage to get my binoculars on a few thousand on them on the near side, but I still haven't seen a Rusty among them yet. Bob Royse Robert Royse [log in to unmask] www.roysephotos.com ______________________________________________________________________ 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]