Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 17:03:14 -0600 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: "J. B. Churchill" Subject: Longspur Rough-legged Hawk Short-ears and other highlights Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Hello: This weekend: Friday: Irish Grove 2 Short-ears, several thousand Grackles and Robins. Sparrows of all kinds (Swamp, Song, White-throated, Fox) all feeding along the edges of the roads. OC Inlet Nothing too unusual. A couple Harlequin Ducks. I certainly missed the eared grebe if it was there. I saw about 4 Horned Grebes. CBBT Lots of Great Cormorants, all 3 scoters, a single Gannet and all age classes of the 3 most common Gull species. Saturday: Pelagic Zone of VA Razorbills, Fulmar, Manx Shearwater, Red Phalaropes, Kittiwakes, Gannets, Glaucus, Herring, Lesser Black-backed, Great Black-backed Gulls etc. (I only got to see some of the above mentioned). Sunday: Deal Island WMA American Bittern, 2 Short eared Owls and 4 Northern Harriers Manadier area in Talbot County (near the Sandhill Crane spot; no Sandhill by the way) Lots of Sparrows along the roads, a towhee, Lots of Horned Larks along these roads too. Sparks Road area One Lapland Longspur seen on Rt 480 South and East of Ridgely, several Snow Geese (did not find any Ross' Geese), a single Water Pipit, American Tree sparrows (2), Savannah Sparrows (lots), Field Sparrows (about 5 or 10), Song, and White Throated Sparrows by the score. Monday: Taking the long way back to work (from Greenbelt) today, I stopped at Willow Road in Washington County (a side road off of the last exit before Sideling Hill) and found a light phase Rough-legged Hawk that perched nicely for me. I thought it was a dark phase until it perched and I could see its white head and upper breast. Strange how they do that to me. ====================================================== John B. Churchill, M.S. Home (304) 292-5072 GIS Analyst Work (304) 293-4832 West Virginia University ext. 4456 Natural Resource Analysis Center http://www.nrac.wvu.edu/users/jbc ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================