Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 09:48:02 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Bob Hartman Subject: woodcocks and a question MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Yesterday evening Toni and I went to Little Bennett to try to find the displaying woodcocks that Rob Gibbs mentioned a couple of days ago. That was quite successful; 8-10 were vocalizing at the location Ron mentioned, and we saw 2-3 of them. Thanks for the tip, Ron. We bird at LB frequently, but almost always in the AM, and we've never seen woodcocks there. We went early (4:30 or so) and walked for a while before sunset. Didn't see many birds (bad time of day), but we did see one thing that puzzled us, and want to ask for opinions from others. For at least 15 minutes while we were walking, there was what appeared to be a "kettle" of hawks overhead, about 20, very high, so that we couldn't see much detail. All appeared to be very white underneath (both wings and body), with possible black wing-tips. Looked for but couldn't discern tail-bands on the white tails. Could these have been Broad-Winged Hawks? It seems pretty early. The only other thing we could think of that would be that big and white underneath is gulls, but we've never seen or heard of gulls forming a "kettle". Opinions would be welcome. Bob Hartman Colesville ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================