Greetings - at 5:15 pm I was scanning from Perkin's Beach parking lot (the westernmost parking lot at upper Edgewater) at Cleveland Metroparks Edgewater Park. Gulls were in small numbers, cormorants were scattered, and only a few Mallards and 2 Am Black Ducks were loafing close to shore. While following a feeding flock of gulls I picked up on a loon offshore to the NNE of Perkins, east of the Crib. Immediately noticeable was the more slender look to neck and smaller look to bird overall and striking, unbroken solid dark/light demarcation of the neck without any "indentations" of white. Bill less thick and heavy then Common, and overall snakier looking bird. Bird moved very slowly to the west, and when lighting started getting dark, we left with it when it was in the NNE direction of being in-line with the Crib. I'll check for it in the a.m. jb Jen [log in to unmask] Cleveland, Ohio 330-701-6452 Bird Illustrator / www.jenbrumfield.com Birding Tour Guide (Ohio), Local Patch Birding / www.jenbrumfield.com Birding Tour Guide (worldwide), Tropical Birding / www.tropicalbirding.com Naturalist/Artist, Cleveland Metroparks / www.clemetparks.com LEICA Birding Optics Prostaff / http://en.leica-camera.com/sport_optics/NorthNW Lake Erie blog / www.northnw.wordpress.com ______________________________________________________________________ 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]