What an amazing day to be on the lakefront. I was fortunate to bird with Jerry Talkington, Emil Bacik, and Ray Hannikman. Starting out at around 8am at Headlands we found groups of horned grebes along with a few hooded mergansers in the water near the coast guard beach. Walking out toward the lighthouse we searched the breakwalls for purple sandpiper but came up empty. We had a large group of 60+ tundra swans fly directly overhead early and in with the group was a red-throated loon. Large groups of rb mergansers were streaming over along with common loons, surf and black scoters and a small group of snow geese. We had several small groups of dunlin streaming close to shore popping over the waves. Fun to watch! Another group of small shorebirds travelling W just off shore turned out to be pectoral sandpipers ID'd by Jerry...pretty amazing. About 2000+ bonaparte gulls were feeding just off the lighthouse but no little gull. We left the beach area to post up and do a lakewatch off Headlands Road which gave us some height to view the lake better. More dunlin, horned grebes, scoters, bufflehead, common loons. Then bingo Jerry spots 2 RED PHALAROPES travelling W beside a few mergs. Shortly after, 2 groups of mergansers (about 75+ in each group) were heading W close to shore and Jerry spots a small duck was nestled in the first group. A single juvenile HARLEQUIN DUCK. Fantastic!! The lighting was great on these birds today. We decided to check out Eastlake to try to pick through the bonaparte's for little gull. We didn't find the bird but there were about 1500+ mergansers in the harbor and about 2000+ bonaparte's and 1 great black- backed gull. It was such a fantastic day today it was hard for me to stop and drive home so I decided to go W toward Huron. I met up with Helen Taft and we drove to Huron Harbor searching the massive bonaparte flock for little gull. No luck but we did have 1 common tern in the flock and had great looks of that bird. The grand finale happened at 4:00 when a massive flock of 10,000+ rb mergansers started streaming over along with a few scaup heading E. That was an INCREDIBLE sight. Have fun out there and peruse those flocks for rarities!! ______________________________________________________________________ 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]