Saturday at the boardwalk was pretty good for the birders. The pond area still had a Belted Kingfisher, good numbers of Ring-necked Ducks and Lesser Scaup. There were three real highlights for the day and one noticeable tragedy. Ok, the good news first. Birders like Darin Miller saw at least six Purple Finches yesterday. They were eating the White Ash seeds which look just like canoe paddles. They're sandy tan in color and about 2-1/2 inches long. One of the male Purple Finches starting singing for Delores Cole, Darin Miller, a couple from Philadelphia and myself. The group took photos while I watch this RASPBEERY COLORED bird sing very softly. It was being drowned-out by a male Northern Cardinal and a Red-winged Blackbird. The next highlight was seeing and hearing the Rusty Blackbirds and Eastern Towhees. Delores Cole took a couple of real nice photos of a Rusty Blackbird with a fair amount of rust color on its back while it was flipping leaves looking for food. We saw one dig-up a snail, crush it, and then eat it. How cool is that. The third real exciting thing was around 4:30 PM, Lee Garling and Jeff Abke heard not one, but maybe even two Northern Saw-whet Owls singing on the boardwalk somewhere down around the bridge area. They unfortunately could not find these secretive little rascals. What an experience to hear them during the late afternoon hours of the day. I'm so jealous guys as I have never heard one in the wild! Ok, now for the bad news people. The White Ash trees that are scattered throughout the boardwalk in small numbers are starting to show signs of Emerald Ash Borer. Several trees are already covered with their holes and some have even died. The ash trees of North America produce wonderful seeds (canoe paddle shaped) that the finches and grosbeaks love to eat. This supermarket of food is about to close-up at Magee Marsh. I guess they'll have to find their food at Wal-Mart like the rest of us! Hello China! Maybe the ash trees will recover one day. Keep those bird feeders full people. Ok, so I'm preaching to the choir. Sunday Morning 6:00 to 7:00 AM on the boardwalk. I didn't hear or see any owls, but I did get to hear the Winter Wrens sing, sing, and sing. It was so awesome to once again here the fastest flute players in the world. They started singing at about 6:44 in the early morning light. Eastern Towhees, Song and Swamp Sparrows, American Robins, Pied-billed Grebes, Red-winged Blackbirds, Killdeer, and a few ducks also started to begin their wake-up calls. The most exciting thing for me was the scary sound coming from a Wilson's snipe down near the east end of the boardwalk. If you came to presentation at the Black Swamp Bird Observatory on American woodcock you learned that these shorebirds make this sound from their tail feathers as they descend from the sky. The males do this on their breeding grounds 24/7. I looked up the sound in Kenn Kaufman's book and he says it sounds like a "winnowing". Mark Shieldcastle who did the program was up on their breeding grounds and heard this all day and night. I only heard this sound one other time in my life when I lived in western, PA. We also played a tape of the sounds from the American Woodcock and Wilson's snipe for everyone to hear. Oh, by the way, we saw the woodcock do his dance, song, and crazy flight. Priceless. Later birding fans, Christopher J. Knoll Education Director Black Swamp Bird Observatory 13551 West State Route 2 Oak Harbor, Ohio 43449 Phone: 419-898-4070 Fax: 419-898-1363 ______________________________________________________________________ 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]