My mother and I were birding on South Bass Island yesterday afternoon (Saturday, April 23) when we got a call from Gay Pippert Ladd that her sons and friends had located an American Bittern in their backyard on South Bass Island. We went over and got great looks at the bird and Gay has very good photos. The back of their yard was flooded from the recent rain and the bittern was feeding on earthworms. The bird continued to feed undisturbed most of the afternoon and was still there when we left. List below from our drive around the island. Beautiful display of Dutchman's Breeches on the island right now. Happy Easter! Lisa Brohl Other birds seen: American Egret Great Blue Heron Herring Gulls Common Loon Double-crested Cormorant Red-breasted Merganser Bufflehead Scaup sp. Redhead Mallards Canada Goose American Coot Turkey Vultures Yellow-bellied Sapsucker Yellow-shafted Flicker Downy Woodpecker Black-capped Chickadee Dark-eyed Junco Northern Cardinal Lots of Chipping and White-throated Sparrows Fox Sparrow (Friday) Tree Swallow-many feeding out over the lake Barn Swallow Purple Martin-returned to alot of island houses Large Flocks of Common Grackles, Red-winged Blackbirds, Cowbirds, Starlings American Robins everywhere Wood Ducks, Hooded Merganser and American Wigeon reported yesterday were not found. ______________________________________________________________________ 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]