Monday Jan. 9, afternoon: Below Hoover Dam: male northern shoveler - 1 mallards - XX Canada geese - XX ring-billed gulls - XXX Area E: pied-billed grebe - 1 double-crested cormorant - 1 Canada geese - XX Red Bank Marina: ring-billed gulls - XXX herring gulls - 4 Bonaparte's gulls - 9 Hoover Meadows Nature Preserve: American tree sparrows - XX northern mockingbird - 1 house sparrows - XX Mudhen Marsh Nature Preserve: white-throated sparrows - about 10 downy woodpeckers - 2 red-bellied woodpeckers - 2 Carolina chickadees - X tufted titmouse - X the Galena boardwalk: mallards - 6 hooded mergansers - 3 Canada geese - XX And the most extraordinary experience: I heard the ice sing. For birders, imagine a soft, muted but constant chorus of winter sparrows in a brush pile, with the lisping winter call of brown creepers punctuated by winter calls of golden-crowned kinglets. Because my ears are better than my eyes, I depend so much on sound to guide my birding, and this was a totally new experience for me, to hear the ice sing. Margaret Bowman Newark, OH ______________________________________________________________________ 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]