This morning I finally ran out of ways to procrastinate and with gear in hand began the task of cleaning my nest boxes at the Hoover Nature Preserve. This could become a sport known as sloshing as the mud and silt have the consistency of chocolate pudding in many places. After mucking your way to the next box you get to open it and see what surprise it has to offer. Today’s prizes included 4 Little brown Bats, 8 Deer Mice, 12 very large spiders and a first, a flying squirrel. It apparently gnawed at the entrance to enlarge it just enough to squeeze through. But with the work come the rewards - birds. The area between the Area N roadbed and the end of the Area M boardwalk is showing more mudflat and with it the arrival of shorebirds, abet not high numbers yet but things are looking up. Viewing is best from the Area N roadbed. Area N also yielded some decent warblers this morning. Maintaining he nest boxes and birding don’t mix if one wants to get the nest boxes done quickly. But the conditions were comfortable, mild temperature, low humidity and very few mosquitoes. Species observed in Area N and on the mudflats at Area M included: Double-crested Cormorant Great Blue Heron Great Egret Green Heron Turkey Vulture Canada Goose Wood Duck Mallard Red Tailed Hawk Semipalmated Plover Killdeer Lesser Yellowlegs Solitary Sandpiper Spotted sandpiper Semipalmated sandpiper Western Sandpiper Least Sandpiper Pectoral Sandpiper Ring-billed Gu ll Herring Gull Caspian Tern Morning Dove Barred Owl Ruby-throated Hummingbird Red-headed Woodpecker Red-bellied Woodpecker Downy Woodpecker Eastern Wood Pewee Eastern Phoebe Red-eyed Vireo Blue Jay American Crow Carolina Chickadee Tufted Titmouse White-breasted Nuthatch Carolina Wren American Robin Gray Catbird European Starling Cedar waxwing Nashville Warbler Chestnut-sided Warbler Magnolia Warbler Black-throated Green Warbler Yellow-throated Warbler Black-and White Warbler American Redstart Song Sparrow Northern Cardinal American Goldfinch Charlie Bombaci Hoover Nature Preserve ______________________________________________________________________ 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]