Back on 3/6 Bill Tacon was kind enough to send to this list photos of the Hoover tern; unlike the first versions I saw, they were not cropped to exclude the ring-billed gull standing beside it, These photos are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/60299532@N07/sets/72157626211286482 and I believe they show the overall lengths of these two birds, at equivalent distances from the camera, to be quite close. You have to overlook the longer legs of the gull and its bulkier body, and just look at the overall lengths, though they are standing at slightly different angles in the point of view. There is no way the tern is ~1/3 shorter than the gull, and I regard this as very strong evidence that lesser crested tern is ruled out. Perhaps another photo will emerge (there were two people standing on the dam yesterday taking photos of the tern standing with gulls on the floating dock below; the light from there was excellent, and I hope they'll share their photos), but for the time being it looks like a royal tern to me. Bill Whan ______________________________________________________________________ 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]