Linda and I birded at Delaware Wildlife Area and Delaware Lake in Delaware County today. Although much of the water is still iced over, there is plenty of open water and everywhere there was open water there were very good numbers of waterfowl. The large puddles created by the recent rain were filled with activity from Canada geese and dabbling ducks to Killdeer. The grassy fields to the side of Leonardsburg Road and Panhandle Road also yielded some nice finds including male Northern Harriers, Ring-necked Pheasant and a Merlin. The Columbus Blue Jackets have new competition, immature Bald Eagles. We watched a small group of them using an unidentified cadaver as their hockey puck. Either that or they were trying to display bad table manners. We began with Leonardsburgh Road, entering from Horseshoe Road and covering Area A. We next hopped up US 23 to the Delaware State Park covering the areas that extent to the water. Next we continued north on US 23 to SR 229. Going south on SR 229 we checked, in order, Areas M, G, F, E, D, C and B. Every area we visited seemed to contribute a new species or two to our tally. Assuming the Delaware Wildlife Area lives up to its past history the best is yet to come. Charlie Bombaci SPECIES LIST Great Blue Heron 1 Turkey Vulture 30+ Snow Goose 3 Canada Goose Wood Duck 6 Gadwall 8 American Wigeon 21 American Black Duck 45 Mallard 200+ Northern Shoveler 7 Northern Pintail 211 Green-winged Teal 17 Canvasback 42 Redhead 100+ Ring-necked Duck 300+ Lesser Scaup 50+ Bufflehead 10 Common Goldeneye 3 Hooded Merganser 36 Red-breasted Merganser 18 Ruddy Duck 2 Bald Eagle 6 (all immature) Northern Harrier 2 (males) Cooper's Hawk Red-tailed Hawk American Kestrel MERLIN Ring-necked Pheasant American Coot Killdeer 49 Ring-billed Gull Herring Gull 3 Rock Pigeon Mourning Dove Red-bellied Woodpecker Downy Woodpecker Northern Flicker Blue Jay American Crow Horned Lark Carolina Chickadee Tufted Titmouse White-breasted Nuthatch Carolina Wren Eastern Bluebird American Robin Northern Mockingbird European Starling Yellow-rumped Warbler American Tree Sparrow Field Sparrow Song Sparrow Swamp Sparrow White-throated Sparrow Dark-eyed Junco Northern Cardinal Red-winged Blackbird Rusty Blackbird Common Grackle Brown-headed Cowbird House Finch American Goldfinch House Sparrow ______________________________________________________________________ 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]