I urge birding readers to attend Larry Rosche's talk "Birds of Northeast Ohio" tonight at the Kirtland Bird Club--see VanValkenburg's post here of 5/31 for details. I was intrigued to be reminded that 376 bird species have been recorded in the Cleveland region Rosche will be covering. This region has been variously defined over the years, but now consists of seven counties (Cuyahoga County plus the six contiguous ones). The total of 376 (see Rosche's "Birds of the Cleveland Region," 2004) is an astonishing ~89% of the species on Ohio's state list! This is more than nearly anyone's Ohio list accumulated over a lifetime. I wonder if any other comparable region in Ohio can match this. "Birds of the Toledo Area (Anderson et al., 2002) lists 357 species for the "Toledo Area," defined as all of one county and parts of four others. Could the Toledo Area, if it were enlarged to include seven counties (or an equivalent coverage) surpass the Cleveland Region's numbers? I imagine other species have been added since them. It also does include some "poaching," including a portion of Michigan territory...but then the state border up that way has often been contested; I believe parts of Ottawa and Magee once belonged to the Wolverines. I wonder about the Cincinnati region, too. This, endowed with varied habitat and excellent birders for over a century, probably has a dog in the race, but I don't know where to find it. It's been a long time since a work treating this region has been published. Kemsies and Randle's 1953 "Birds of Southwestern Ohio" covered all of four counties and parts of two more, and includes many taxa regarded as subspecies now; I have seen an unofficial estimate for Hamilton County alone of 333 species, but this includes some questionable reports that would need to be closely examined before publication. I took a look at Central Ohio, too. Franklin County's list has around 330 of Ohio's 424 species. By adding records from just three adjacent counties (cherry-picking Barrow's goldeneye, cinnamon teal, long-billed curlew, pom jaeger, Sabine's gull, swallow-tailed kite, Harris' hawk, painted bunting, groove-billed ani, harlequin duck, Pacific loon, Arctic tern, white-winged dove, spotted towhee, gyrfalcon, black-headed grosbeak, little gull, magnificent frigatebird, common raven, species no one has seen all of in Ohio), I can get almost to 350, but I wonder if choice finds in three other adjacent counties will get far enough to match Toledo's number, let alone Cleveland's. Significantly, these lists come from the four regions of the state where you can see the most Homo sapiens, too. This of course does not mean that the more people, the more varied the birding. These lists are high at least in part because each region has a tradition more than a century long of carefully recorded observations by competent students of the local birdlife. Toledo and Cleveland also have the advantage of Lake Erie as a unique ecological resource, and Cincinnati has the Ohio River...but then so do Ironton and Steubenville. Having universities helps, and local organizations and publications. It could well be that the "Sandusky Area," if you count Ottawa, Sandusky, Erie, Seneca, Erie, Huron, and Lorain counties, would have the longest list, but we'll probably never know! 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]