Turkey vultures and blackbirds can be false signs of spring. Snipes and rails can winter in Ohio, too, and there are even records of woodcocks doing so. Larry Rosche told me the other day that every winter of his birding career about half a million wintering blackbirds have been roosting in Barberton; there are some big winter roosts in western Lake Erie marshes, too. My folks used to host at least a hundred wintering TVs in their Ohio back yard every year. Bluebirds winter widely. No, the true first arrivals have to be birds only freakishly seen in the winter, regular species you can count on as infallible first arrivals of spring. I'd be interested in what species readers think really qualify as newsworthy in this way. Good candidates are pectoral sandpipers, chimney swifts, and Louisiana waterthrushes. Sure, tree swallows and purple martins can blunder in on a wing and a prayer, but pectorals and swifts have come all the way from South America, on a very deliberate itinerary and spring arrival time. Unlike a vulture loafing up from the next county south, their flocks can't risk everything on finding warm weather out of season. And the waterthrushes's voice in a chilly damp glen is all the more welcome for being the earliest promise kept among songbirds. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ 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]