March 5, 2012 Moments ago, 11:25 AM, I was outside in the yard next to our farmhouse. I heard a strange (but somehow familiar) rolling, croaking call overhead, and looked up to see a single sandhill crane flying directly overhead, a couple hundred feet above the Flint Ridge upland. My exuberant reaction caused my wife Jane to open the door and ask what was going on. I told her the news, and she remarked she thought it might have been something "important." I replied that it was, as I pointed to the bird receding in the gray, March sky to the north. "Yardbird" number 135 for Valhalla Acres Fiber Farm. The 39th yardbird of 2012. It is alway a treat when we get waterfowl, gulls, herons and such flying over our place, since we don't have a pond, or really any wetlands other than vernal pools, springs and seeps. Dillon Reservoir is a couple miles north of here, as the gull flies. A crane is way cool! Bob Evans Geologist, etc. Hopewell Township, Muskingum County ______________________________________________________________________ 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]