Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2000 16:37:05 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Tyler Bell Subject: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable For anyone who doesn't care about Attu Island (definitely not in Maryland) = please delete now. I won't post anything else about this. Well, we made it back to Maryland on Friday in time to drive home in the = thunderstorm. A fitting end to a bizarre trip. Jane Kostenko and I were = supposed to fly out on the advance trip to Attu but due to a series of = strange occurences, we didn't end up leaving until the A trip and got our = extra time by delays on the return. Birding was slow on Attu this year due to mostly north winds but a nice = storm from the west/southwest blew in Wednesday so the second group might = be getting some juicy birds. We got a small taste of what they might be = seeing with 5 Hawfinches and a Gray-tailed Tattler before the plane = arrived. As Dennis and Jane Coskren said in an earlier post, perhaps the best bird = was the Far Eastern Curlew but the most discussed bird was the naumanni = subspecies of Dusky Thrush which constituted a second North American = record. When we first saw it we thought it might be a Redwing because of = the red tail and underwing coverts. This subspecies is not covered in the = 3rd edition NGS and not covered well in most of the field guides in the = Attu library. Perhaps the most calorically intensive birds were the pair of Smew (first = spring male and female) at the ponds at Alexai and the Mongolian Plover at = the east tip of Alexai (about 13 miles from base). The easiest bird was = Brambling which were right outside the back door of our sleeping quarters. Though about 2/3 of the group came down with some sort of respiratory = problem, Jane K. and I managed to avoid it. Birds were hard to come by but = with lots of work, they came. It was a trip to remember for sure! Tyler Bell mailto:bell@acnatsci.org California, MD http://www.audubon.org/listserv/md-smas-general.html http://www.audubon.org/listserv/nd-birds.html ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================