Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 19:37:30 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Matt Hafner Subject: Conowingo Field Trip MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Spike Updegrove led a 10th grade biology field trip to Conowingo Dam today with Kevin Fehskens and myself as spotters. As expected with 40 mostly noninterested students, the landbirding was not spectacular. Though the waterfowl was very much in full swing. Above the dam the lake is mostly frozen with alot of gulls resting on the ice. Within about 5 minutes I found an adult Lesser-Blacked Gull in the flock. At the edge of the massive ice patch, were thousands of Common Mergansers, mostly males (almost all mergansers south of the dam were females). Closer to the ice edge were many Mallards and Black Ducks along with Lesser Scaup, Ring-necked Ducks and American Wigeon. At the base of the dam, there were 4 American Coots swimming in front of the rocks by the break wall. There was 1 first-winter Lesser sitting on the rocks. The next excitement was a flock of 11 Tundra Swans flying up river followed by 9 Pintail flying downriver. As we walked down the trail along the river, a drake Wood Duck was flushed repeatedly from the bank. The personal highlight for this trip however were 2 flocks of 200+ Snow Geese flying south directly overhead along the trail! A smaller flock of about 20 birds flew over river a few minutes afterward. Within the three flocks I counted 15 Blue Geese. This was only the second time I had ever seen Snow Geese in the county with the first time being a mere 6 birds. Stops at the Deer Creek bridge and Rock Run proved productive with Ring-necks, Wigeon, Lesser Scaup and Gadwall at Deer Creek and 6 Tundra Swans at Rock Run. Despite pitiful landbirding, our waterfowl really made the trip worthwhile. Matt Hafner Bel Air, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================