Greg Miller points to many signs that southern birds from drought-stricken areas are, and will be, showing up here in unusual numbers. One example is little blue herons. You can read Peterjohn's account of this species (pp. 29-30) without seeing any parallel with the current records. Hicks (1931. The American Egret and the Little Blue Heron in Ohio during the summer of 1930. Wilson Bulletin 43(4):268-281, online at http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Wilson/v043n04/p0268-p0281.pdf ) reported 1185 little blues in the state in July-August 1930, *none* of them in the adult blue plumage. This was in a short period during which juvenile waders of this species and the snowy egret showed up in Ohio in extraordinary numbers; perhaps this phenomenon was associated with dry conditions in the south, but it did not involve adults. Other than a few adults seen in the western Lake Erie marshes beginning in the 1980s, when small numbers began nesting irregularly on West Sister Island, June records of little blue herons in the blue plumage in Ohio are very scarce, and nearly all confined to the Lake shore. But all of a sudden this year they are showing up in unexpected places. Here in Franklin County, hardly a hotbed of unusual herons in the summer, spots in the Metro Parks have recorded three adults on 3 June and five adults at a different location on 22 June. Are these birds fleeing dried-up areas way down south? Did they forgo breeding this year? Might inland Ohio breeding occur if temperatures increase? Some of the climate-change models suggest they might. It is worth considering that these and other birds of southern wetlands will continuing showing up here this year, and we should heed Greg's advice to look carefully in our currently abundantly wet spots. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ 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]