Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 07:20:13 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Jim Stasz Subject: Eared Grebe. North Beach, Calvert Co. 14 April MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Folks! After work yesterday, 4/12. I stoped to do some nirding to unwind. The marsh at the north end of town had 3 adult Little Blue Herons and a Snowy Egret. None of these were there in the morning. At 6:30 or so they all took off and headed NNE pver the Bay, perhaps on the way to Poplar Island, Bodkin Island, or even Pea Patch. Since the light is more favorable in the afternoon I scanned the Bay. There are still 11 Greater Scaup from the 1000s that wintered. The 23 Horned Grebes were most;y in breeding plumage and among them was one breeding plumage Eared Grebe. TheEuropeans call it the Black-necked Grebe. Even in early transitional pluamge from Winter to Spring the Horned Grebes show browns or rufous on the front of the neck; Eared never does. The golden tufts are wispier on Eared and sometimes hard to see when they are first coming in, but the entirely black neck stands out. I recommend looking from Atlantic Avenue, which is along the Bay north of 7th St. Good Birding! Jim Jim Stasz North Beach MD jlstasz@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 ======================================================================= =========================================================================