While birding close to home yesterday, I ran across 2 Red-br.Nuthatches, including one coming to our backyard feeder. The prior day, I had seen 2 other birds in central Columbus - 1 haunting the feeder at Greenlawn cemetery, another in the tiny urban park of Willow Branch. All of these birds had 2 things in common: they were around feeders, and they spent a lot of time in nearby spruce trees. Other RBNU I've seen over the past month almost all fall into this pattern. Watching the one at our feeder, the bird used a spruce tree both as a hiding place and as a place to cache seeds it took from the feeder. It also would wedge the seeds in bark crevices in order to hammer them into smaller pieces. It could be that the combo of feeders & spruce trees is a big attractor for these birds, and birders with that combo might watch for lingering RBNU. I also biked around Woodside Green, Academy Park, and the Old Ridenour Road parks of Gahanna, all along Big Walnut Creek in a strip informally called the Gahanna Greenbelt. Many of the highlights were already touched upon by Bob & Elaine McNulty, but I'll add some numbers. Bird diversity was good, but still skewed towards temperate migrants. In 2 hours, I found Barred Owl - 2 calling back & forth in Woodside Green Park Cooper's Hawk - 1 Chimney Swifts - 4+ flying over riparian woods Swallows - small #s of Rough-winged, Tree, and Barn, usually 2-3 Pileated Woodpecker - a pair, but I didn't see the cavity excavation E.Phoebe - 3 White-eyed Vireo - 1 singing in the chalk dumps section of Academy Park Red-eyed Vireo - 1 along Old Ridenour Rd. House Wren - 5 singing in different locations Winter Wren - 1 in chalk dumps section Ruby-cr.Kinglets - 5-6, many singing Blue-gray Gnatcatchers - 15+ They seem to be having an excellent migration. Hermit Thrush - 2 in Woodside Green Park Swainson's Thrush - 1 along Old Ridenour Road Gray Catbird - only 2 so far Parula Warbler - 1 singing along Old Ridenour Rd Nashville Warbler - 2 singing along Old Ridenour Yellow-thr.Warbler - at least 4 singing along different parts of Big Walnut Creek Yellow-rumped Warbler - still the most common, with 25-30 birds Palm Warbler - 4+ in the chalk dumps section of Academy Park Pine Warbler - 1 singing in Woodside Green Park E.Towhee - 4 different individuals at different locations Chipping Sparrows - small flocks at several locations White-throated Sparrows - small flocks at many locations, perhaps 50 total ______________________________________________________________________ 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]