Hi All, In order to prepare for the Sustainability Week in Forest Hill Park (in Cuyahoga County‹the park is in Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland) bird walk this Sunday morning, I went over the ground starting about 8 this morning. Not a lot, but some nice birds. My walk started off with a bang‹too bad I can¹t arrange for this to happen again on Sunday: As I got up to the Cleveland Heights softball diamonds, I saw a red-tailed hawk and a Cooper¹s hawk circling over the Great Meadow. Good start. Then I saw an immature Cooper¹s Hawk in a tree ahead of me. Then I heard crows calling, and turned around to see two Cooper¹s Hawks doing a poor job of evading a good-size group of American Crows‹probably fifty in all. The Coops just flew around, even through the group of crows. Clearly they weren¹t experienced in this sort of thing. Then a hawk called, and I saw one on top of a softball backstop. The two immatures got to the same backstop, and then more‹in the end, there were no fewer than six Cooper¹s hawks on the backstop! One, clearly larger than the others, was the adult female, and one in mature male plumage stood out. But that suggests four fledglings! Pretty cool! My list for the walk was: Red-talied Hawk (3 sightings‹at least 2 different individuals) Cooper¹s Hawk- 6 American Crow- ~50 Blue Jay- ~12 Downy Woodpecker- 2 or 3 Red-bellied Woodpecker- 4 Northern Flicker- 5 Pileated Woodpecker (heard only) Canada Goose- (many, of course) Mallard-2 American Robin-many dozens Swainson¹s Thrush-3 Hermit Thrush-1 Ruby-crowned Kinglet-many Warblers‹only one each of only three species: Black-polled Yellow-rumped Palm Sparrows: White-crowned-1 White-throated- a few seen, many heard Mourning Dove-2 European Staring-4 There was a pretty good selection of fall wildflowers‹goldenrods, asters, eupatoriums‹but the cold and wind seemed to be keeping most of the insects down. Best wishes, Steve Cagan Cleveland Heights (Cuyahoga County) -------------------------------------------- Steve Cagan, photographer [log in to unmask] www.stevecagan.com www.pbase.com/stevecagan 216-932-2753 (USA) 314-473-0361 (Colombia‹hasta 13 de septiembre de 2010) ______________________________________________________________________ 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]