This morning I monitored my nest boxes at Old Sunbury Road and the Eastshore Yacht Club at Hoover Reservoir (Delaware County), and then I made a quick stop at the Area M boardwalk. The Prothonotaries are fledging rapidly now and its getting hard to keep track of them. The fledglings initially flutter more than fly to the nearest perch, usually buttonbush or something similar. After a they grow a little they work their ways up the trees to more lofty perches. The low perches combined with their noise makes it fairly easy to locate them when they initially fledge, but once they get into the foliage it’s another story to spot them. I had an interesting experience with a father and son that were fishing at the Area M boardwalk later in the morning. I was telling them about the nest boxes they kept seeing when I heard a male PROW call nearby. I suggested I might call him in so they could learn more about the species and why wetlands are important. I phished and out came not just the male, but three of the young that had fledged earlier. I think we have two new birding enthusiasts. The Bald Eagle nest on the east shore across from Oxbow Road has fledged. I observed both adults and managed to locate two of three eaglets high up in cottonwood trees near the nest site. They were calling raucously for the adults to bring food. I also spotted a barred owl in the pine grove along Old Sunbury Road as I headed back to the car. More of note, there are already mudflats forming along this stretch which can be very good for shorebirds when the habitat is appropriate. Unless we get significant rain Hoover might give a repeat of 2005 when we located 33 species of shorebirds. Other than the PROWs at the boardwalk, the most interesting finds were a Great Egret; following up on an earlier posted observation, at platform #2 there were both adult Osprey and one chick still at the nest, and in a tree across the expanse there were another two adult Osprey that appeared to be copulating. It seems rather late for this but what was observed can’t be explained as any other behavior I can come up with. A complete list of the morning’s observations follows. Charlie Bombaci Hoover nature Preserve SPECIES LIST Double-crested Cormorant Great Blue Heron Great Egret Green Heron Turkey Vulture Canada Goose Wood Duck Mallard Osprey Bald Eagle Red-tailed Hawk Killdeer Ring-billed Gull Mourning Dove Yellow-billed Cuckoo Barred Owl Chimney Swift Ruby-throated Hummingbird Belted Kingfisher Red-headed Woodpecker Red-bellied Woodpecker Downy Woodpecker Northern Flicker Eastern Wood-Pewee Acadian Flycatcher Eastern Phoebe Great Crested Flycatcher Eastern Kingbird Warbling Vireo Red-eyed Vireo Blue Jay American Crow Tree Swallow Northern Rough-winged Swallow Bank Swallow Cliff Swallow Barn Swallow Carolina Chickadee Tufted Titmouse White-breasted Nuthatch Carolina Wren House Wren Blue-gray Gnatcatcher Eastern Bluebird American Robin Gray Catbird Northern Mockingbird Brown Thrasher European Starling Cedar Waxwing Yellow Warbler Prothonotary Warbler Louisiana Waterthrush Common Yellowthroat Eastern Towhee Chipping Sparrow Field Sparrow Song Sparrow Northern Cardinal Indigo Bunting Red-winged Blackbird Common Grackle Baltimore Oriole House Finch American Goldfinch House Sparrow ______________________________________________________________________ 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]