Not to wear out my welcome, I combine two posts here. First, Brad Sparks just called to announce finding a Ross's goose at Pickerington Ponds Metro Park near Columbus a few minutes ago. It was in the big goose flock that at the time was on the east side of Bowen Rd near the observation deck location. Also: "I saw a bluebird at Silvercreek Park in Medina County on Monday. Is this a bit early?" Thoughtful questions like this begin to pile up at this time of year, when hopes of spring, and migration, affect us all. There is little migrational movement underway in Ohio yet. Bluebirds are in Ohio year-long. So are turkey vultures, meadowlarks, robins, flickers, coots, black-crowned night-herons, pied-billed grebes, many waterfowl spp, and lots of other birds. True, the farther north you look in Ohio the fewer of these birds you usually see, but they are probably not moving north yet. Of course, some familiar birds are rare and worthy of note in February in Ohio. Examples are green-winged teal, horned grebe, cormorant, killdeer, Wilson's snipe, Am woodcock, sapsucker, phoebe, hermit thrush, Am pipit, or savannah sparrow. Common in migration here, they too are very unlikely to be moving north locally yet. Even more noteworthy are birds with few records in February. The Virginia rail reports of recent days belong in this category; these reports are especially significant, because they are of more than just a stray, but apparently one or more individuals able to survive a tough winter here, something that may tell us about the limits of this species' abilities, and/or about climate change as it affects Ohio. Again, surely not migrating. Birding is more rewarding personally once one learns how to evaluate how unusual a given sighting is. Also, our collective knowledge advances when accurate reports are made of unusual occurrences. If you learn without a teacher, it will take many years to get a grasp of how unusual--if at all--a given sighting is. There are good shortcuts to this kind of hard-won experience. No serious Ohio birder should be without Peterjohn's "The Birds of Ohio," and for this purpose even more convenient is the Ohio Bird Records Committee's "Checklist of the Birds of Ohio": the 2004 edition is on-line at http://www.ohiobirds.org/publications/OBRClist.pdf and the expanded 2008 edition is in print. With these resources, you can assess at a glance if a record is early or late. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]