Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 15:09:15 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Bob Solem Subject: Common Moorhen juvenile in PG County Comments: To: Jim Stasz Comments: cc: Tim & Jo Ray MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Tim Ray sent this sighting. Reply to Tim for more details. Bob & Jo Solem Laurel, MD 20723 Odendata@msn.com (Thursday, July 27th) A pair of Common Moorhens (one adult, one juvenile) were swimming togethe= r in a marsh in the Lanham area of PG county at lunchtime today. They swam an= d fed together for a while, and then the adult led the juvenile up onto a small "island" of Pickerelweed (the island does have soil above the water level= ). They remained on the island for 20 minutes. While there, the adult bird broke off brown pickerelweed stalks from around the edge of the island an= d carried them to the center of the island, where it appeared to be buildin= g a mat (or perhaps covering a nest?). The island is within an extensive freshwater marsh (more than 10 acres) that is full of a variety of plants= , including extensive beds of bladderwort. The juvenile moorhen matches th= e drawing in the National Geographic field guide. Tim Ray ========================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ========================================================================= ===========================================================================