Howdy, Paul-- Glad to hear you're on the QT for Smith's longspur. The most recent hotspots for this species--and this was a long time ago--were in the vicinities of Seeds Rd and Zuber Roads south of Grove City (some interesting contrasting habitat along Hiner Rd, too); one could also look for gull gatherings nearby, of course. Most Ohio records come in April, but as you'll read in the below account some have arrived in March. Elsewhere, I edited a whole issue of the Ohio Cardinal wiht articles treating this little bird in the region back in 2002, and if you're really really interested I could photocopy the 28 salient pages for you... Best of luck, Bill Smith’s Longspur Calcarius pictus. Unknown to the older chroniclers in Ohio, and only in the 1950s recognized as a rare spring migrant in the county. Changes in agricultural practices, and perhaps a loss of common knowledge about successfully finding these longspurs, have diminished local reports to zero in recent decades. Maximum 250 in the southwestern part of the county (especially Seeds Rd.) 4/15/1956 (AFN 10(4):338), with other flocks as large as 200 east of Grove City on 4/20/1965 (AFN 19(4):482, with 11 audio records #7347 at the Borror Laboratory on the same date), 7-12 birds on 4/7/1968 (WCB 13:59) and 100 on 3/6/1971 (WCB 16:39) with 100 Lapland Longspurs. There have been no verified county reports since the ‘70s, although spring flocks continue to be found in several western Ohio counties as a result of careful searching for these scarce and often well-camouflaged migrants. Trautman (1968:310) called it a “regular, very local spring transient in central and western Ohio.” There are several November records in Ohio, but Franklin County has none from fall, when longspurs would be still more difficult to detect. Most often reported here during April in corn-stubble infested with foxtail (Setaria sp.) in large fields; elsewhere they have also been found in grasslands associated with airports. Smith’s have appeared regionally as late as 5/9/1956 nearby in Pickaway County (WCB 1(2):18), where two flocks were found on 4/20/1965, the larger of ~300 birds (Trautman MS OSU Archives 6/4/65). No winter records are known. There are no known Franklin County specimens, but skins at OSUM come from nearby in Madison and Pickaway counties. Median local arrival 4/1, departure 5/1 (Bent 237(3):1634). ______________________________________________________________________ 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]