Ben Leese, a friend and diligent researcher, found this old account in a book by a Quaker clergyman traveling through Ohio in 1804*, and published it not long ago in an Ohio Historical Society publication. The location was in Miami County near Piqua, Ohio. Here is the text, to which the reader is invited to supply the modern names: "During our detention here this afternoon, we observed a flock of birds alighting from the trees, different in appearance from any we had seen. Our landlord informed us they were parrots, and that they were common along the Great Miami, and to gratify our curiosity he shot one. It was about the size of a dove, and its plumage resembled the green parrot of South America, the head red, the wings tipped with the same color, the tail long and the bill and tongue of the same description as the chattering parrot. As they alighted from the trees, they made a hoarse noise resembling the chattering of the common parrot. There is also a woodcock here resembling the red-headed woodcock of Maryland, except that its head is black and its bill ivory." *Hopkins, G. 1804, updated 1862. A Mission to the Indians, from the Indian Committee of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, to Fort Wayne in 1804, with an appendix compiled in 1862 by Martha E. Tyson. T. Eward Zell, Philadelphia. 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.miamioh.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]