Some conversations here recently, about this unexpected flight of long-tailed ducks, or unprecedented numbers of certain gulls at inland reservoirs, may involve important new trends, or maybe just blips on the chart. How can we tell which? One way is to look at history. Back in 1910, Ohio's bird populations were very different from today's. With only ~3% of the original forests remaining, pileated woodpeckers were pretty much extirpated, and wild turkeys seemed gone for good. Most of the forested areas and prairies had been eradicated in favor of agriculture, but farms of the day were not nearly as sterile and uniform as today; in pastures in 3/4 of Ohio's counties upland sandpipers nested, and orchards and uncut dead trees helped make the red-headed our most common woodpecker. In farm outbuildings barn and cliff or "eave" swallows were almost universally found, and the barn owl was to become the state's second-most common owl. Prairie-chickens were still hunted here, probably even a few Eskimo curlews. Birds were not protected, and all could legally be killed, then bought and sold for food (meadowlarks, for example, were relished for potpies), for their feathers, or for "sport." State wildlife officials encouraged the shooting of all hawks, falcons, and owls, passing out free boxes of shotgun shells for the purpose. Duck bag limits had to wait a few years. Bald eagles nested only in a few spots along Lake Erie. Ring-billed gulls were extremely rare--some eminent ornithologists had never seen one here--and in Sandusky children were enlisted to feed scraps to herring gulls to help them survive the winter. Common terns nested along the Lake shore by the thousands, and black terns in every healthy marsh. Piping plovers still nested on remote beaches. The climate was less moderate a century ago. Some birds--Carolina chickadees, mockingbirds, barn owls, black vultures, white-eyed vireos, Carolina wrens, etc.--were largely restricted to the southern counties. Tufted titmice and northern cardinals were much less common in the north. Snowy owls were more often enough found down to the Ohio River in winter, and northern harriers nested in nearly all the northern counties, and in 51 of the state's 88 still in 1935. The last remnants of the great Black Swamp were being eradicated, and draining via tiling and ditching and diversion was drying out other wetlands, which was leading to local extirpations of rails, gallinules, soras, coots, marsh wrens, etc. The great local migrations of tundra swans took place in the spring, not the fall, and trumpeter and mute swans were unknown. Canada geese did not breed in Ohio. Bobwhites could be found in neighborhoods of large cities. Our last Ohio barolina parakeets and passenger pigeons had died within the previous decade. Bluebirds nested in the wild, but purple martins and chimney swifts and cliff swallows had become largely dependent on human structures. House sparrows were more abundant than today, but starlings and house finches were unknown. Is anyone willing to make some guesses as to what our birdlife will look like in 2110? 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]