Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 01:42:03 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Abbie Banks Subject: Re: No Tufted Duck 2/12 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 2/12/00 11:17:29 PM Eastern Standard Time, cheep@EROLS.COM writes: << I, along with many other birders, was unable to find the Tufted Duck today. We searched all along the Virginia side of the Potomac, sifting through the many large scaup flocks. But to no avail. Most of the ducks were seen from Collingwood and south, and many were in areas where it was hard to really see them well (including across the river, at great distances). So the Tufted could easily be in the area, just not in an accessible area. Upstream, the number of ducks along the Alexandria waterfront was very small. Although I didn't stop at the Washington Marina, others did and said that there were some of the usual suspect there, but in smaller numbers than had been there last week. The phone network worked very well. I spoke with Jordan, Dave, Joe, Abbie, MaryAnn, and Rob (and perhaps others). The folks I was birding with, Lisa, Bob & Debbie, got a kick out of the frequency that the phone would ring - I felt like I was in my office. But it was a great way to keep in touch. Just a shame that all we could ever say to each other was, "still searching." I hope to do a little searching tomorrow. Good birding, Paul Pisano cheep@erols.com >> Paul, Thank you for being our base of operations! It does help if you at least know that if the rarity is sighted you will find out where it is. This is such a neat way to search. We checked the sites along the Potomac on the Virginia side east of the Woodrow Wilson and some several times. We wound up at Piscataway because we scoped large rafts of ducks in that general area. It was late in the afternoon...about 4:30 and as we were tooling down the road my friend spotted a Barred in a tree on the right before Piscataway. We stopped of course and had excellent views. The sun was setting and it was quite cold. We did walk the path along Piscataway Creek and We did not site the Tufted however, there were hundreds of Scaup and it could have been in the general vicinity. The next best stop was for some steaming hot coffee! Alas, I have to work Sunday but GOOD LUCK with you search. Abbie dovekie7@aol.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================