With a bit of help I saw some good January birds today in the Dayton area.

The previously reported Red-necked Grebe was still at Eastwood Metropark, as was the Ross’s Goose on the Great Miami River near the Stewart St. bridge.

As Mike Shade reported we saw a Cackling Goose near the Washington St. bridge, and after walking a bit north to get a view of the downtown buildings, we found a Peregrine sitting on top of the much shorter building to the left of the Key Bank building.

There were 4 more Cackling geese at the West Carrollton dam.

At the Barrett Paving gravel pit in West Carrollton Redhead and Canvasback were new birds for me, and from there I went to Germantown Reserve to look for Purple Finches that Chris Zacharias told me about. Right after exiting the car at the barrier blocking the nature center road to the picnic shelters I saw a female Purple Finch in a tree by the road. I spent some time looking unsuccessfully through the thousands of Starlings for a Red-winged Blackbird that Chris also saw there. I did see a Harrier (female/imm) that might have been the one he saw yesterday.

Shane Egleston then called from the Barrett Paving gravel pits where he found Cormorants, N. Shovelers, and Green-winged Teal which I missed on my visit. After seeing those birds, and on my way home, Shane called again, this time with about 40 Rusty Blackbirds and a few Red-winged Blackbirds. So I turned around and pulled up behind him to see the birds which were still in a tree next to the road. The birds were on Upper River Rd just south (maybe 50-100 yards south) of Farmersville West Carrollton Rd (just east of the gravel pit). If headed south there is enough of a grassy berm to pull over, the birds were on the east side of the road. This was at about 5:30, and after looking at the birds for a few minutes from our cars, they flew away and down.

Rick Asamoto
Miamisburg

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