Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 21:09:00 -0500 Reply-To: les_eastman@netfox.net Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Les Eastman Organization: Harford Bird Club Subject: Conowingo Dam and Susquehanna River on Saturday, Jan 22 Comments: cc: Michael Bowen MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I was the co-leader, along with Mike Bowen, of a Montgomery MOS trip to Conowingo Dam on Saturday morning. The gulls were very disappointing, both in number and variety. Only 2 generators ran from about 8:30 until 10:30 producing mild activity from less than 1000 gulls. I was able to find one adult Lesser Black-backed Gull on the wall which promptly sat down, hiding his primary field mark - the yellow legs. No other gulls besides the usual 3 species were found. Although the gulls were disappointing, the other birds were not. An adult Peregrine Falcon showed up about 9:30. We didn't see it catch a pigeon but it had one before long. It remained perched in a sheltered spot for the rest of the morning. The Bald Eagle numbers at the dam was disappointing, also, with only about 3 or 4 being seen. (However, read on.) Other birds seen from the dam were: Pied-billed Grebe Double Crested Cormorant Black Duck Mallard Common Merganser - several hundred Red-breasted Merganser Hooded Merganser and of course, the ever present Great Blue Herons, Turkey Vultures and Black Vultures. A walk down the nature trail produced: Bufflehead Common Goldeneye Hundreds more Common Merganser Winter Wren acting like a Brown Creeper Brown Creeper Downy Woodpecker Red-bellied Woodpecker Pileated Woodpecker Common Flicker Yellow-bellied Sapsucker Ruby-crowned Kinglet Golden-crowned Kinglet We left the dam and went to check the lake above the dam, only to find it frozen over, so we headed down river with a stop on Stafford Road to look for Red-headed Woodpecker. Mike and I got a brief glimpse of one and heard it calling. (Fran - add this to the year list.) Next stop was Lapidum Landing where there were thousands of birds on the water, mostly Common Mergansers and Canada Geese and gulls. The thousands of Common Mergansers was an impressive sight! Also present were 6 adult Bald Eagles. We saw one sail out over the river, pluck a fish from the water and return to its perch. The next stop was the marina in Havre de Grace where I had to leave the group to pick up my daughter. Mike tells me that they added Canvasback, Lesser Scaup and Ruddy Duck to the trip list for a total of 46 species. Les ====================== Les Eastman les_eastman@netfox.net Havre de Grace, MD Visit the Harford Bird Club Web Page at http://birdclub.harfordhasit.com Visit the Havre de Grace Soccer Web Page at http://hdgsoccer.harfordhasit.com ================================================================= To unsubscribe send a message to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ==========================================================================================================================================