Today was pretty remarkable. It was very interesting how it started here. By 9:00 I had only counted 4 ducks. About 9:15 the ducks started coming and between 9:15 and 11:00 ducks were almost constant. When they first started moving I had several huge flocks of scoters (190, 120, 90, 70). After that, scoters were regular but there were no flocks larger than 20. I quit counting at 12:00, but I am occasionally watching and there are still small numbers of scoters now and then. All in all, about 1500 scoters for the day. Over 5,500 scaup for the day. The brant passed by around 10:00. It was noticeable because it was heading west whereas almost all of the other birds were going east. The eider was with a group of 3 white-winged scoters. Like Jerry Talkington's bird I suspected it was a common eider due to color and shape. Distance was too great to be certain. The harlequins were a single young male and a female with a group of bufflehead. The long-tailed ducks were all in a single flock. I believe this was my largest flock of long-tailed ducks for Ohio. I also had a distant flock of white-winged scoters that contained three birds that may have been eiders. The distance was just too great, but they sure looked interesting. Lakeshore Waterbird Survey Lakeshore Reservation, North Perry, Lake County October 27, 2012, 0745-1200 Weather- cloudy with rain, Wind- NE 25-35 Temperature 46-45 F, Barometer- 30.07-30.10 Humidity- 93-92, dew point- 44-50 Waves- 8-10 feet, Direction- east Canada goose 2 BRANT 1 Gadwall 26 American wigeon 2 American black duck 14 Mallard 86 Green-winged teal 2 Canvasback 6 Redhead 21 Ring-necked duck 24 Greater scaup 306 Lesser scaup 2,216 Scaup spp. 3,457 EIDER SPP. 1 female HARLEQUIN DUCK 2 (1 female, 1 young male) SURF SCOTER 352 WHITE-WINGED SCOTER 173 BLACK SCOTER 611 SCOTER SPP. 420 LONG-TAILED DUCK 38 Bufflehead 134 Common goldeneye 18 Red-breasted merganser Ruddy duck 44 Unidentified duck 1,000+ Many far out when it was raining hard. Common loon 3 Double-crested cormorant 437 JAEGER SPP. 1 Bonaparte's gull 78 Ring-billed gull 136 Herring gull 384 Lesser black-backed gull 1 adult Great black-backed gull 2 John Pogacnik 4765 Lockwood Road Perry, OH 44081 ______________________________________________________________________ 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]