I don't have news updating the status of the six purple gallinules know to have been in Ohio beginning on 2 May 2010, except that the first known arrival continues in Lorain County, where I saw it yesterday, hale and hearty apparently. Brainard Palmer-Ball of Kentucky has contributed important information to the picture, including the news that not one but three of these birds appeared in Kentucky, and two in Tennessee, on a very similar schedule this spring. He was kind enough to send this page http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lmk/?n=flood_050210_how_it_happened from the NWS station in Louisville. Some extraordinary weather conditions on 1 and 2 May caused a lot of destruction in the area, with winds as strong as 70 mph and at times 1-2 inches of rain per hour. This violent storm out of the southwest was hemmed in somewhat by a strong high to the east, creating a turbulent corridor of very strong northbound winds. It seems this condition accompanied a migratory movement of this southern bird species, and these fairly weak fliers were literally sucked up far north of their normal destinations. A northward movement over what is usually a broad front and for a relatively short distance was transformed into a narrow corridor that landed a lot of them way up here. This seems perfectly plausible to me, and after everything is sorted out it might be revealed that other species may have suffered the same fate. It shows how we might learn to look for certain storm-waifs from the south in rare spring conditions like these, just as we have learned to anticipate wind-blown wanderers in the wake of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico in the fall. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ 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]