Two questions to ponder. With such a large percentage of Great Lakes frozen (up to today, anyhow) we have expected to see larger numbers of species that normally winter on these bodies of waters. One example is the red-necked grebe. On the two most recent near-total freeze-ups, we have seen wondrous numbers of them across the state, in the winters of 1984 and 2003: Ohio observers counted 100+ in '94 and 190+ in '03. This year we've seen even fewer than usual thus far, countable on one hand. Is the frozen-lake theory no longer tenable? If so, what explanation might make more sense? I keep reading surprising reports of greater scaups seen this winter (and a lot way inland, which is still odder), and fewer of lesser scaups. Admittedly, this is a really tough field ID to make under normal conditions, but in an average year lessers far outnumber greaters. Milton Trautman went on a bit of a rampage about these species back in the '30s, asserting that nearly all of the greater scaup species in the state's museums had been misidentified by the experts of yore, and he--in the OSU museum anyway--replaced them with real greaters he had more carefully identified. See https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/auk/v048n02/p0257-p0258.pdf and https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/auk/v052n02/p0201-p0202.pdf If I read Trautman's conclusions correctly, only one of 525+ museum skins labeled as Ohio greaters actually was correctly identified. A whole roomful of experts missed the IDs of dead scaups on the table, and so, I expect, do we, often enough, when we look at them from a distance. Or has this unusually cold winter brought unusual numbers of greaters this far south? Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Please consider joining our Society, at www.ohiobirds.org/site/membership.php. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]