Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 19:56:30 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Gail Mackiernan Subject: Rough-legs si! Barnacle Goose no! Hi all -- Barry and I were retuning from a Virginia Beach pelagic (an understatement that it was not a nice one!) and did some Eastern shore stops on the way home. Today we hit Maryland and went over to Deal Island WMA to look for Roughlegs and whatever else might be around. We found two Roughlegs, one a light phase bird, the other a gorgeous, almost black bird -- back, head and all of undersides sooty back, no white at base of tail. The tail was banded black and gray. The underwing coverts and trailing edge of underwing were black while the flight feathers were gray, darker than the illustration in the Geo guide. It gave a fine fly-by and hover show as well. No ducks to speak of, the marsh and impoundments are just thawing out. We also tried for the Barnacle Goose, getting to the field at about 3 pm to find a lot of Canadas and a single blue Snow goose, but no Barnacle. While we were there a few small Canada flocks flew in, so there is probably some turnover in the flock. We gave a quick glance for the Sandhill Crane at Tarbotten Mill Rd. but the little pond is mostly frazen and there were only a handful of waterfowl. Has the crane been seen recently? (We were away all of January...) Cheers, Gail Mackiernan ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================