Right here from my window at the Science Center, at exactly 5:30pm today, I was browsing new cell phones (mine's broken) when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a distance tight flock heading straight for me. The first thing I thought was "cormorants," but it didn't take me long to realize that I was far off. The birds were flying low, only ~200-300 ft above the ground. They got close enough that I could now see that a third of the birds were entirely black underneath (including the vent), a third still completely buff, and another third spotted black. At this point I was 100% confident that I was looking at 56 AMERICAN GOLDEN-PLOVERS. You could imagine how my heart was racing and my legs were moving me into the air. They flew directly over my building, headed straight west. I could even see the backs of some were golden. Not only is this campus bird #173 for me, but as far as I can tell on eBird, there were no previous April records for Delaware or Franklin counties. Also, it's the highest count ever for these counties by 50 individuals. I couldn't even call anyone because my stupid phone is broken! Good birding, Sean --- Sean Williams, '11 Undergraduate of Ornithology of Dr. Jed Burtt Ohio Wesleyan University HWCC 724 Delaware, OH 43015 617-470-4094 ______________________________________________________________________ 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]