I took a drive into Ashtabula County to check out the different lakefront sites. It was a good day with decent numbers of birds at each stop. There were not a lot of waterfowl around, but gulls and terns made up for it. At Geneva State Park there was nothing out of the ordinary. There were a lot of Bonaparte's gulls off the mouth of the marina, but nothing rare. At Ashtabula Harbor, nothing at Walnut Beach of note. At Lakeshore Park there was a first year LAUGHING GULL on the beach. There was also a single BRANT off the east end of the outer breakwall. Not a lot of gulls here. At Conneaut there were a lot of terns flying around the harbor. They would occasionally land on the flats until something would scare them off. At one time there were at least 300 common terns on the flats. I also found a single late BLACK TERN, and at least four Forster's terns. I also had one Caspian tern land briefly before heading west. I also found one short-billed tern with a rounded head that flew off before I was able to check it more closely or get photos. Unfortunately it disappeared in a cloud of terns. I was unable to relocate it. One thing I noted was a lot of these birds were banded with USFWS metal bands. We usually do not see a lot of terns this late in the season at this end of the lake. I wonder if they may have been blown in with the "Northeaster" that just hit the East Coast. Other birds of note at Conneaut were 1 white-rumped sandpiper, 8 dunlin, 6 sanderlings, 13 tundra swans, and a lesser black-backed gull. John Pogacnik 4765 Lockwood Road Perry, OH 44081 (440) 259-2751 ______________________________________________________________________ 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]