Date: 6/19/12 6:30 am
From: James Tyler Bell <jtylerbell...>
Subject: [MDBirding] non-bird observations


On Saturday afternoon, Jane Kostenko and I were out walking in our neighborhood in St. Mary's and heard two different species of annual cicadas. One had a cyclic sound to its call kind of like one of those lawn sprinklers that sends out a burst a couple times a second. The other was the kind that winds up to a crescendo then stops. I'm guessing that with the impending heat the rest of the week, we'll be hearing more of them.

I just came back down from switching out sampling glassware on our rainfall collector here at SERC in Edgewater. A very odd thing out on the Bay. As far as I could see were freighters all pointing downstream. I'm assuming that this has something to do with the 11 am departure of the tall ships from Baltimore? I've never seen anything like it in all the years that I've been doing the tower changeout.

Finally, on a birding note. I swung down the road to Flag Ponds this morning and finally picked up my Calvert year Yellow-billed Cuckoo. So, I'm not trying really hard for county or state year birds but YBCUs have been fairly elusive this year where they're usually fairly easy.

Tyler Bell
<jtylerbell...>
California, Maryland