The most notable sighting today was the 58 Double-crested Cormorants. We usually get a significant movement of cormorants once or twice each spring. This number is second highest I've had in the five years I have been making these systematic counts, exceeded only by a count of 67 on 5 Apr 07. Today's birds were also remarkable for the fact that they were all in prime breeding plumage with prominent crests and bright orange gular patches. Ebird flagged the Northern Rough-winged Swallows as being early, but I seem to think they follow pretty quickly on the Tree Swallows. Cheers, Bob ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: <[log in to unmask]> Date: Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 9:32 PM Subject: eBird Report - Cowan Lake , 3/29/10 To: [log in to unmask] Location: Cowan Lake Observation date: 3/29/10 Notes: 44F Winds: 340/10 Sky: BKN Water: 100% open Lake level: +0.9' Boats: 3 Number of species: 24 Canada Goose 82 Mallard 7 Canvasback 1 Ring-necked Duck 8 Lesser Scaup 229 Bufflehead 27 Hooded Merganser 4 Ruddy Duck 65 Double-crested Cormorant 58 Great Blue Heron 1 Turkey Vulture 7 Red-shouldered Hawk 1 American Coot 2 Bonaparte's Gull 6 Ring-billed Gull 1 Herring Gull 2 Northern Flicker 2 Blue Jay 1 American Crow 5 Tree Swallow 35 Northern Rough-winged Swallow 4 Tufted Titmouse 1 American Robin 3 Northern Cardinal 5 This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org) -- Robert D Powell Congress Farm Research Institute Wilmington, OH, USA [log in to unmask] http://rdp1710.wordpress.com Nulla dies sine aves ______________________________________________________________________ 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]