Greetings all - A long venture into the western county fields (Mercer County) with enthusiastic Emil Bacik and Gabe Leidy, turned up highlights of a total of 5,500+ Lapland Longspurs, Northern Harrier, a single PURPLE MARTIN, numerous Vesper Sparrows, American Pipits, Horned Larks, and 6 Short-eared Owls. The actual target of the trip was to find adequate habitat for Smith's Longspur (and thus to find Smith's Longspur) but we struck out today after 7 hours of diligent searching. Area covered included a Rockford west to the Indiana border, and south of Rockford to Oregon Road. PRIME habitat exists on the south side of Manley Road, exactly where Smith's were found in 2009. Manley Road runs east-west. The fields lie on the south side of Manley, inbetween the intersections of Hill and Erastus Durbin Roads. The Manley Road fields, alone, held 4,400 Laplands. We noticed relatively few Smith's-type fields within the radius searched. However, another fantastic cornstubble field, with loads of foxtail lies on west side of Now Road, a quarter mile south of where it "T's" with Rockford West Road (which runs east-west). Now Road (also called Now T 71) is approximately 3 miles east of the Manley Road fields. best of birding - Jen Jen Brumfield [log in to unmask] Cleveland, Ohio 330-701-6452 Bird Illustrator / www.jenbrumfield.com Birding Tour Guide (Ohio), Local Patch Birding / www.jenbrumfield.com Birding Tour Guide (worldwide), Tropical Birding / www.tropicalbirding.com Outdoor Education Specialist/Artist, Cleveland Metroparks / www.clemetparks.com Nikon Birding Optics ProStaff / www.nikonbirding.com ______________________________________________________________________ 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]