I directed this note to a friend copied to this list yesterday, but apparently it didn't get through... Yeah, BIWA is a good place for both species, but with a lot more frogs than rails! Yellow rails, like most birds, understandably use their vocalizations mostly during the breeding period, rather than fall, and if you listen to recordings, their sounds are easily distinguishable from the far more likely and numerous sounds from the frogs. The BNA treatment says "In Michigan, males cease calling about mid-Jul (Stenzel 1982), but in Quebec they call as late as 25 Aug (Robert and Laporte 1993)." Still, there are plenty of late September records of yellow rails in Ohio, and the October records tend to occur early in the month. First half of September---not so much. Overall, we get a lot more yellow rails in Ohio--in either month--than are ever documented well enough to record. Bill Whan ______________________________________________________________________ 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]