Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 07:55:49 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Peter Webb Subject: Yellow-crowned Night-herons at Baltimore yard MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This is now the fourth season for the birds here in my Lancaster Road yard in the northwest suburbs of the city and the earliest appearance of the species here in the calender year. The previous arrival dates were an apparent second nesting June 6 the first summer 1997, Mar. 31 "They're BAAACK!" the second year 1998, Apr 1 last year, and now Mar. 23. Two birds were seen this morning, one was perched over my house in the traditional nest tree (from which the origional nest fell late last summer) and another at the newer nest above the neighbor's mailbox. Because the birds made their soft "whoop" call which last year seemed to be associated with rivals in territorial dispute and not with courtship, I speculate that these birds are both of the same gender, quite possibly "Mama", the origional female, at the newer nest, and "Junior" over my house, the younger female who took over the origional nest last year. That tragic nesting attempt last year ended with the only nestling being dumped onto my roof to die there as the origional nest shifted and tilted onto its side last spring during a windy rain storm. Meanwhile "Mama" built a new nest at the neighbors' house and raised two youngsters. With the appearance of these birds, I would like to advise birders in other counties to be on the lookout for Yellow-crowned Night-herons to make their county arrival appearances in other locations in our region. Pete Webb pwebb@bcpl.net (home, after 6) pew@niroinc.com (work, 830-5 M-F) ========================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ========================================================================= ===========================================================================