Bruce Simpson and Bill Kinkead joined me to do some birding in south-central Ohio today. We covered areas in Ross and Pickaway Counties including Scioto Trail State Forest, Stages Pond Nature Preserve, Pickaway Plains and several nooks and crannies in between. We specialized in brown-eyed owls as we scored with both a Barn Owl and a Barred Owl. Scioto Trail State Forest was somewhat quiet as the employees are still busy cleaning up the debris from the recent wind storms. We did find a few decent birds there such as Red-shouldered Hawks, Brown Creepers, Eastern Towhees, Eastern Phoebes and a Pileated Woodpecker that was calling but not coming out to be seen. At Pickaway Plains we observed many Horned Larks, a few Eastern Meadow Larks, a pair of Hooded Mergansers, a female Northern Harrier and finally, much to our surprise, a lone Snow Bunting in breeding plumage. Stage’s Pond State Preserve provided most of the waterfowl we observed and also a Ring-necked Pheasant, Rusty Blackbird and Barred Owl. We had 51 species for the day: Pied-Billed Grebe Horned Grebe Double-crested Cormorant Great Blue Heron Turkey Vulture Canada Goose Wood Duck Mallard Northern Shoveler Ring-necked Duck Lesser Scaup Bufflehead Hooded Merganser Northern Harrier Cooper’s Hawk Red-shouldered Hawk Red-tailed Hawk Ring-necked Pheasant Killdeer Ring-billed Gull Rock Pigeon Mourning Dove BARN OWL Barred Owl Red-bellied Woodpecker Downy Woodpecker Northern Flicker Pileated Woodpecker (heard calling but not seen) Eastern Phoebe Blue Jay American Crow Horned Lark Tree Swallow Carolina Chickadee Tufted Titmouse White-breasted Nuthatch Brown Creeper Carolina Wren Eastern Bluebird American Robin European Starling Eastern Towhee Song Sparrow Dark-eyed Junco SNOW BUNTING Northern Cardinal Red-winged Blackbird Eastern Meadowlark Common Grackle House Finch American Goldfinch House Sparrow Charlie Bombaci **************Feeling the pinch at the grocery store? Make meals for Under $10. (http://food.aol.com/frugal-feasts?ncid=emlcntusfood00000002) ______________________________________________________________________ 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]