I was at Killdeer plains today about 9:30 am to see all the snow geese reported the last two days, but found not a snow goose anywhere. I talked with a guy who was there at dawn and he said a big flock lifted off earlier and headed south. I did find one white-fronted goose on Pond 27 along with lots of Canada geese and about 125 tundra swans there. Next I checked the Harold Roe pond. There were lots of Canada geese and tundra swans there too, plus one mute swan, but no other geese. The rest of the morning I drove around, checking various places. I looked hard for Northern shrike, but never found one. I checked the owl pines, but nothing there. At that time, I ran into Su Snyder and Sue Evanoff and they told me of a flock of rusty blackbirds at the south end of TH-108. About 1:15pm, as I was driving south on 108, near Harold Roe pond, a very large flight of snow geese flew over quite high, heading south. I had a great scope view of these as they flew over, probably at least 500 geese. I then checked for the blackbirds and they were on both sides of 108 about 1/4 mile north of the intersection with Morral-Kirkpatrick. There were about 100 birds including about even numbers of rusty and redwing blackbirds, with a few cowbirds too. I stopped back at Pond 27 and found a lot more white-fronted geese, a count of 80 is conservative, as they were mixed in with a lot of Canada geese. I decided to head down to Big Island refuge, which turned out to be a mistake as there was very little there. Driving back through Killdeer Plains about 3:15pm on CH-115, another very large flight of snow geese went over, again over 500 birds heading south. Not sure what is going on with these snow geese, but they are heading south. It looks like afternoon might be the better time to seek them. Randy Rowe, Wooster ______________________________________________________________________ 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]