This weekend (2/6), the Cincinnati Bird Club embarked on the “first that we know of” Cincinnati Merlin Census of the city’s urban green spaces and surrounding areas. We fielded 16 parties with 32 participants covering 26 different locations around Cincinnati. Our original focus was to cover the urban core of the city, where several locations have long histories of wintering Merlins such as Old and New St. Joseph Cemeteries and Spring Grove Cemetery. Other locations around these spots have also produced birds in the past, so our goal was to get an approximate figure for just how many Merlins are moving back and forth between these pockets of green space. Was it just one or two that make the rounds around town, or was there one at every property? Once our 8 main focus areas were covered, we expanded outward to the Little Miami River Valley, Northern Kentucky and other locations based on our member’s interests. Survey times were from 3pm – 5pm in an effort to get birds coming into night roosts. Afterwards, we all met at a local establishment to tally our finds. A google map of the surveyed locations can be found here: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z6zfKMbqPiMY.kf_ZOg2LG8m4&usp=sharing Here are our results for Merlins and other raptors during the tally. Merlin was the only species that we made a significant effort to identify individually (time first observed – time last observed, behavior, age, gender, anything else individually identifiable). 37 Black Vulture 24 Turkey Vulture 2 Sharp-shinned Hawk 4 Cooper’s Hawk 2 Accipiter sp. 6 Red-shouldered Hawk 29 Red-tailed Hawk 1 American Kestrel 1 Peregrine Falcon 8 Merlin Merlin breakdown: 1 at St. Mary’s Cemetery from 3:00-4:08pm 1 at Old St. Joseph Cemetery from 4:40–4:42pm 1 at New St. Joseph Cemetery from 4:35-5:00pm 2 at Spring Grove Cemetery, one from 4:05-4:27pm and another at 4:08pm 1 at the Newtown Gravel Pits 4:50-4:51pm 1 at Highland Cemetery at 5:10pm (Kenton Co. KY) 1 at Evergreen Cemetery from 3:55-4:00pm (Campbell Co. KY). Within our original scope of the Cincinnati urban core, 5 total birds were counted. 2 more were in Northern Kentucky, and another in the Little Miami River Valley. Using times, age, gender, photos, and other individually identifiable information, we have a very high degree of confidence that all of these are different individuals. In addition to the 8 we counted today, the California Woods golf course had one on Thursday that is likely another individual, and Arlington Cemetery recorded one during the Western Hamilton CBC 5 weeks ago, but that bird has not been reported since. There were also recent Northern Kentucky reports from CVG airport and along I-275, two locations not surveyed today. Special thanks to co-organizer Bill Zimmerman and all of our section leaders: Ned Keller, Kathy McDonald, Josh Eastlake, Kathi Hutton, Jack Stenger, Steve Pelikan, Bill Stanley, Joe Bens, Mark Gilsdorf, Jeff Bilsky, Jay Stenger, Gale Wulker, Eric Burkholder, Kirk Westendorf, Rodney Crice, Bill Hull and Jim Rettig. Also thanks to all of our participants who helped with the count. ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Please consider joining our Society, at www.ohiobirds.org/site/membership.php. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: listserv.miamioh.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]