A surprisingly fine day of favorites today (5/4) in upper Montgomery Co. and lower Frederick, starting w/FOS Baltimore Oriole calling, and five Pine Siskins in my yard (Darnestown, Mont. Co.), then my favorite warbler - Hooded Warbler - singing and seen well, 20 to 50 feet off the road, 10:30 am on S. side of River Rd, approx. one mile west of Willard Road; moving steadily NW as he sang. Two FOS Yellow-throated Vireos singing 200 yds s. of River Rd, approx 2 miles west of Willard. Continuing on to Mt. Nebo Road, lots of Red-eyed and 3 White-eyed Vireos, FOS Field Sparrow, Savannah Sparrow, lots of FOS Indigo Buntings singing on Offut Road. Later a Wild Turkey Tom strutted across West Harris Road in front of me in Barnesville. Same road at bridge had Parula, Yellow, Common Yellowthroat, FOS American Redstart, FOS Ovenbird, White-eyed Vireos, Orchard Oriole.
Where Mt. Ephraim Road becomes Frederick County, shoulder of Sugarloaf Mt. rang with a couple of dozen Ovenbirds, FOS Scarlet Tanager, Red-eyed Vireos, 1 more Yellow-throated Vireo, Northern Waterthrush in the road. Also a flock of approx 200 American Goldfinches all atwitter. At Lily Pons, I got to look DOWN on a MERLIN hunting - a brown bird, it came up the Monocacy from the South, just cleared the bridge and lashed its wingtips in a raking dive toward the shorebirds on the mudflat below. One or more of the Least Sandpipers screamed, nobody flushed and the Merlin kept on going upstream with 2 Purple Martins and a Kingbird after it.
3 Least Sandpipers
6 Solitary Sandpipers
1 Lesser Yellowlegs
1 Killdeer
2 Gadwall (1 male, 1 female)
Common Raven came over and two Sharp-shinned Hawks precipitated briefly from high cloud high haze to harrass it, then vanished upward again. Additional Common Raven joined in harrasment south past Sugarloaf.
Good Birding!
Don Simonson
(Darnestown, Mont. Co. MD)
simonson at verizon dot net
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