The 14th March Kelleys Island census was conducted yesterday. Due to illness, my regular census helpers were not available today. Too bad, because it was a very good day. Weather was near perfect. 60 species and 8192 individuals were observed on the census. The 14 year average for March is 55 species and 5722 individuals, so this was an above average census. No new species were observed for the March census data but 14 species had all-time high counts for March. In addition, I stayed on the island and set-up nets to attempted to banded migrating Northern Saw-whet Owls. Kelleys Island does very well in the fall with saw-whets but I have only ever banded one in March on the island. This was partly because I could not get there and set-up to do it. But yesterday was different. The nets were up at 7:30 PM and taken down at 10:30 PM. (I got tired!). *6 Northern Saw-whet Owls were captured and banded.* All were females. The first was captured at 8:00 PM before I turned on the audio lure. So they are moving north through Ohio right now. Unfortunately, the weather doesn’t look good for the next few nights. 48 Canada Goose 2 Wood Duck 3 Gadwall 2 American Wigeon 57 Mallard 42 Greater Scaup 88 Lesser Scaup 1262 Bufflehead 2180 Common Goldeneye 8 Hooded Merganser 16 Common Merganser 1046 Red-breasted Merganser 4 Divers species? 3 Horned Grebe 12 Double-crested Cormorant 4 Great Blue Heron 8 Turkey Vulture 1 Bald Eagle 1 Cooper's Hawk * Red-tailed Hawk * American Kestrel * Wild Turkey 18 Killdeer 1 American Woodcock 79 Bonaparte's Gull 142 Ring-billed Gull 251 Herring Gull 11 Great Black-backed Gull 59 Gull species? 2 Mourning Dove 1 Eastern Screech-Owl * Great Horned Owl * Northern Saw-whet Owl 3 Belted Kingfisher 5 Red-bellied Woodpecker 36 Downy Woodpecker 14 Northern Flicker 11 Eastern Phoebe 3 Blue Jay 54 American Crow 4 Horned Lark 9 Tree Swallow 53 Black-capped Chickadee * Red-breasted Nuthatch 1 White-breasted Nuthatch 5 Brown Creeper 4 Carolina Wren 4 Winter Wren 9 Golden-crowned Kinglet 2 Eastern Bluebird 1 Hermit Thrush 541 American Robin 152 European Starling 8 Yellow-rumped Warbler 1 Eastern Towhee 118 American Tree Sparrow 16 Fox Sparrow 133 Song Sparrow 7 White-throated Sparrow 211 Dark-eyed Junco 71 Northern Cardinal 554 Red-winged Blackbird 8 Rusty Blackbird 542 Common Grackle 80 Brown-headed Cowbird 7 Purple Finch 53 House Finch * American Goldfinch 121 House Sparrow 60 species 8192 individuals * = species observed on census day but not during the census -- H. Thomas Bartlett Tiffin, Ohio [log in to unmask] ______________________________________________________________________ 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]