blockquote, div.yahoo_quoted { margin-left: 0 !important; border-left:1px #715FFA solid !important; padding-left:1ex !important; background-color:white !important; } One found just now outside of Indianapolis by Don Gorney Chris Collinswww.fb.com\indianararebirdalert Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone On Sunday, May 8, 2016, 11:46 AM, Bill Whan <[log in to unmask]> wrote: 'Tis the season, and ruff records are being reported, mostly along the East Coast as usual: Mass, CT, Dela, Fla, Ala, NC over the last few days. What I've read tells us this is an Old World species (there are a few nestings in remote areas of Alaska), and many of them winter in Africa--especially the females. I don't think any records of mating--which is a remarkable and conspicuous event--are known from the rest of our continent, but some wonder if perhaps a small nesting population here feeds those East Coast records. Speculation about this has gone on for quite a while--see https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/wilson/v077n03/p0294-p0296.pdf--but without confirmation as far as I know. Trautman (2006:152) wondered, for example, why only one record at the time came from Iceland, which would surely have been a more convenient stop for flights from Europe. We have a bunch of records in Ohio, most of the distinctive males; females are likely as common, but trickier to pick out and identify (even ruffs can stumble on identifying females; Trautman reported having seen a male courting a lesser yellowlegs in 1962). In addition, males are known to mimic female plumage in mating season, apparently giving them an edge to inseminate them in the crowded spring leks. Sex in Ruff City can be strange. Ohio's earliest spring record is from 27 March, but records clump around late April-early May. Ohio's first two records come from autumn and spring down this way, one immature male at Buckeye Lake on 11/10/1872, and an adult male collected in downtown Columbus (near the present site of the Scioto Audubon Metro Park) on 4/28/1878. Worth looking for now in wet meadows and shallow wetlands! 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] ______________________________________________________________________ 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]