Got a chance to peer at the Shrum Mound rookery in Columbus this afternoon; this is located along McKinley Ave between 5th Ave and Trabue. The island rookery there is really cooking, with maybe 50 great blue heron nests, 40 double-crested cormorant nests, and ten great egret nests visible on the north side alone. No idea of how many were on the other side. Parent birds were passing up the murky yellow waters of the quarry lake in favor of more distant venues for food. This is, as far as I know, the largest of only a few inland egret or cormorant nest concentrations in Ohio, and helps to explain the increased numbers of these species seen locally during recent summers. Cormorants and egrets almost always insist on island sites for nesting in Ohio, and this is an especially isolated one, what with the zealous protections employed almost everywhere by quarry owners, as if there were diamonds rather than limestone there. 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]