A little garlic mustard pulling and gutter cleaning around the backyard yielded a small Common Loon flight (more missed, I'm sure) here in the Merriman Valley. A pair of loons headed due north seen at 6:37pm, followed by single birds at 7:08pm and 7:20pm, also headed north and the last bird seen at 7:31pm headed northeast. Other observations: Wood Duck - 1 (m) Common Loon - 5 Great Blue Heron - 1 Killdeer - 1 Herring Gull - 1 Mourning Dove - 5 Red-bellied Woodpecker - 1 Downy Woodpecker - 1 Northern Flicker - 1 Blue Jay - 3 Black-capped Chickadee - 1 American Robin - 7 European Starling - 4 Song Sparrow - 1 White-throated Sparrow - 1 Dark-eyed Junco - 1 Northern Cardinal - 4 Red-winged Blackbird - 11 Common Grackle - 10 Brown-headed Cowbird - 1 House Finch - 1 American Goldfinch - 7 House Sparrow - 2 Douglas W. Vogus - Akron, Ohio. ______________________________________________________________________ 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]