Just sat down to post this and opened a field guide. A stink bug was crawling inside. I whacked it with a tissue over a drawing of a little blue heron. It went to the back porch, where the Carolina Wren awaits a chance to even the score. Even house sparrows won't touch one.* Before this interruption, I wanted to suggest to ID mavens that Ohio has at least three authenticated horned lark subspecies. If you can get a good look there are clear distinctions (much clearer than among the redpolls we agonize about, for example), but sorting them out has become a lost art. Here is what I wrote in my book about records in central Ohio (Natl Geo has good illustrations among the popular guides). "Three field-distinguishable subspecies have appeared in the county. Davie (1898:316) wrote of locally-nesting E. a. praticola that “Mr. James E. Gould found young birds near Blacklick, Franklin Co, July 14, 1893. So far, this makes the breeding range of the Prairie Horned Lark in Ohio extend from the central portion northward east and west” (specimen 2/24/1882 OSUM #1010). E. a. alpestris has only wintered here (specimen 2/25/1928 Univ. Mich. #91576), with high counts of flocks of ~600 on 2/18/1928 (Walker & Trautman 1936:153) and 1202 for the Darbydale CBC of 12/16/1972. Local specimens of the Arctic-breeding E. a. hoyti are OSUM #s 1012 and 3075; this large, pale subspecies has occurred here in very small numbers with wintering flocks of the other forms; it has not been verified in recent years, but careful scrutinies of lark flocks have apparently become unfashionable." Bill Whan Columbus *as I signed off, I saw a junco snatch the stink-bug, appear to choke, then after some fussing carry it off. ______________________________________________________________________ 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.miamioh.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]