In a word, no. I've never seen a gambelli, and from what I can find, there
are few records for this area, or Ohio for that matter. I don't know
anything about the status of gambelli in Indiana, but Peterjohn writes in
"The Birds of Ohio" (2001) that there is an average of "two to five reports
each decade since the 1970s" of gambelli. He also writes that since
"immature individuals [of either gambelli or our standard issue eastern
race] are impossible to identify in the field, the gambelli race may be more
numerous than these few sightings indicate" in Ohio. I imagine Black Swamp
Bird Observatory and some of the other long-time local and regional banders
have more records of gambelli; it's often the case that it's difficult to
track down banding records, but I have to think they're out there.

Locally, I'm not aware of any recent sight records on the Ohio side of
things, but maybe Bill Buskirk has some information from Indiana? There's
also the issue that since it's a subspecies or a race, etc., it's not always
going to be reported or remembered or even looked for by a lot of people. I
admit, I've only rarely had the chance to go out and look closely at
white-crowneds, though I see them every fall and winter--and I usually
remember only *after* they fly away that I ought to be looking for the odd
gambelli, as well. There are a number of other white-crowned subspecies, and
I heard a talk by Jon Dunn a few years back at a Cincinnati Bird Club
meeting in which he said it's possible that the white-crowned group will be
up for a few splits one of these days, and some of the subspecies and races
given full species status, a la the recent Canada goose complex split. But
who knows when or if that will happen.

Kemsies and Randle's "Birds of Southwestern Ohio" from 1953 mentions a
female gambelli collected by Karl Maslowski at his backyard feeder in Mt.
Washington on January 20, 1940, and Charles Drury collected one locally
sometime before 1910--though neither the exact date nor the specific
location are known. Milton Trautman bagged a gambelli at Buckeye Lake in
1928, which many consider the first Ohio record. (As an aside, Trautman's
"The Birds of Buckeye Lake, Ohio" is a fantastic local bird study, and can
be found online at various used bookstore sites, usually for not too much
money.) Nothing mentioned about gambelli in "Birds of the Oxbow," which
covers parts of southeastern Indiana and southwestern Ohio, and nothing I
can find on the database on Ned Keller's website.

So it's a pretty darn rare find just about any way you look at it. Nice
photos, too, of course!

(Let's talk about the dark-eyed and "pink-sided" junco complex, next ;-)

Take care,
---Mike Busam
West Chester, OH