Date: Mon, 8 May 2000 21:27:48 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Arlene Ripley Subject: SMAS Birdathon Comments: To: MD-SMAS-GENERAL@LIST.AUDUBON.ORG Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed The 24 hours of the Southern Maryland Birdathon took place on Friday, May= 5 and Saturday, May 6. This year three teams participated, one in each of t= he southern Maryland counties -- Calvert, St. Mary's and Charles. A total of 154 species were found in the cumulative effort. Our Calvert County team (Tom Harten, Sue Hamilton and I) began on Friday around 4 PM at Flag Ponds where we began adding birds to our list. Highlights were Common Moorhen on Duncan's Pond and a Common Nighthawk. S= ue Hamilton's keen eye found two Great Blue Heron nests overlooking Richardson's Pond. Warrior's Rest provided Sora and Virginia Rails as wel= l as Whip-poor-will. At Scientist's Cliffs, we were able to call in a Scree= ch Owl. The American Chestnut Land Trust provided a Chuck-will's Widow and Battle Creek Cypress Swamp a Barred Owl. At 6 AM on Saturday we began walking the Red trail and service road at Calvert Cliffs State Park. Highlights here were Rose-breasted and Blue Grosbeak, Red-headed Woodpecker, Prothonotary, Blackburnian and Canada Warblers. The rest of the day was spent finding birds like meadowlarks, Bobolinks, sparrows and shorebirds. The only "downer" of the day was getting a flat tire during (thankfully) the last hour of the count. A tally-rally was held at Shirley Wood's home, where we enjoyed not only comparing notes of the day (did I mention it was HOT?) but a most delicio= us dinner. We ended up with a total of 121 species, 21 of which were warblers. Not t= oo bad for a "new" team and a great way to add new birds to my county list! ////// Arlene Ripley | || Calvert County, MD | 0 || aripley@nestbox.com | || http://www.nestbox.com || ========================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ========================================================================= ===========================================================================