Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 23:09:48 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Marshall Iliff Subject: Worcester birds 9/26-27 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, A quick rundown of birding highlights on the Eastern shore over the past two days. On 9/26 I drove down to Ocean City stopping to enjoy closer looks at the Red Phalarope en route. I was pleased to run into the Brodericks there, who were enjoying their state Red Phalarope. As J.B.'s pictures show, this is a juvenile well into first-basic plumage, with retained juvenile tertials a nd some juvenile feathering on the nape. quite different from the buffy juvenile I saw there in mid-October 1997. For what it's worth, in repson se to Stan's post, in 1997 Jim Stasz and I saw a Red-necked Phalarope (juven ile) at Ridgely around 5 Sep and I saw the Red Phalarope there around 11 Oct (don't have exact dates at hand). So it IS possible to get both phalarop es there in one season... Before stopping at Ridgely, John Brown Rd. turf farm had c. 20 Pectoral a nd c. 11 White-rumped Sandpipers, but few other shorebirds. At Hurlock I ran into the Mudds, but decided to skip the ponds since they reported nothing of note. Little other birding until right at dusk, when I went to 94th Street Wood s. A few warblers were there along with my first Winter Wren of the fall. NIGHT: Recognizing the potential for a good nocturnal movement, I experimented with a few listening locations. From 2030-2230 I listened a t Ironshire Station Rd.. Warblers were calling at a constant rate, and the re seemed to be a large heron movement with mostly Great Blues, but also a couple Black-crowned Night-Herons and bitterns calling. I was surprised to get no thrushes at all. I then crossed to Wicomico county to try to add BCNH or AMBI to my county list, to no avail. There clearly was less of a move ment going on there. Back in Ocean City, while getting ready for sleep, I realized that th e movement there was much stronger and quite different in composition. Bobolinks and Swainson's Thrushes were immediately evident, and other spe cies were migrating as well. I listened for the next 1.5 hours from various locations in Ocean City, trying to find a well-lit, quiet location where the street lights were not blinding. 94th Street was not a particularly good choice (generator, bright lights were blinding) but I spent a fair amount of time there and even detected several egret flocks visually. The followin g list, for the OC area only from 2330-0130, is very roughly approximated f rom memory: Great Blue Heron - 20 Green Heron - 25 Black-crowned Night-Heron - 4 Great Egret (seen) - 7 (one group) Snowy Egret (seen) - 15 (one group) Cattle Egret (seen) - 1 (w/ Snowies) American Oystercatcher - 1 (local?) Spotted Sandpiper - 2 Killdeer - locals Least Sandpiper- 3 Semipalmated Plover - 1 (w/ Leasts) Greater Yellowlegs - 1 gull sp. - 1 (seen) Swainson's Thrush - 20+ Gray-cheeked Thrush - 1 (year bird #308) warbler sp. - 175 (seep notes outnumbered buzzy notes, presumably a lot o f redstarts and "baypolls", also some I was tempted to call parulas) Black-throated Blue Warbler - 0 (probably would have recognized this call ) Common Yellowthroat - 2 (prob more) Grasshopper Sparrow - 2 Savannah Sparrow - 6 Chipping Sparrow - 1 Bobolink - 45+ 9/27, ASSATEAGUE Birded from 0700 to 1330 at Assategaue. Began 0700-1130 at Bayside Campground where the dawn flight was good, probably comprising 125 warble rs. Redstarts dominated, with a number of Black-throated Blues, Blackpolls, a nd probably Magnolias. A highlight was findingtwo LARK SPARROWS together in loop B, campsite #39. Later they shifted around some, and over the several hours they roamed th e entirety of the B loop and a little bit of the C loop around the bathroom s. At one point they were sitting right in the main road to Bayside. These were my 4th and 5th Lark Sparrows on Assateague, fully half of Mark "Mr. Assateague" Hoffman's** total, not that I'm keeping score either, ahem*** . I only wish I had seen half as many Western Kingbirds on Assateague as Mark has... Other Assateague highlights were a single CLAY-COLORED SPARROW just east of the Life of the Marsh Trail along the southern woods margin. Mark (and t his year, Greg Miller/Bob Ringler) had found most of the previous Clay-colore ds I have seen in MD, so it was nice to get one of my own finally. The "Vireo Grove" did not disappoint, but unfortunately produced a WARBLING VIREO instead of the hoped-for Philadelphia. Granted, the Warbling is a far be tter bird on this late date... Interestingly, all the previous Philadelphia Vireos I have seen on Assate ague (c. 5) have been in or immediately adjacent to this grove, described by M ark in his previous post. Remarkable that it has been so conistent... Later walks of the Life of the Forest trail and the Seaside Campground we re mostly unproductive. Warblers seen on Assateague today included parula, redstart, B&W, No. waterthrush, Ovenbird, BT Blue, BT Green, Blackpoll, Bay-breasted, yellowthroat, Yellow (3 - surprisingly late), Nashville, Magnolia, Prairie, Pine... Other passerines of note included WE & RE Vir eos, Scarlet Tanagers, Baltimore Oriole (c. 25), Rose-breasted Grosbeaks (c. 1 5), 1 Least Flycatcher, 3 Eastern Kingbirds (fairly late), 1 Eastern Wood-Pew ee, Savannah Sparrows, Golden-crowned and Ruby-crowned Kinglets (winter is ne ar), Red-breasted Nuthatch (2 - my first of season), Winter Wren, and catbirds galore... I'm probably forgetting some stuff, but those are the main thi ngs. At South Point I had relatively little, but one skulker that chipped twic e may have been a Connecticut (also, one flyover in dawn flight may have been...). Alas. On my return trip I had time to look for a Wicomico Cou nty Clay-colored Sparrow that Don Broderick told me about, but was unsuccessf ul. Best, Marshall Iliff miliff@aol.com ** - note that Mark was stripped of his "Mr. Worcester County" title in J une, when he failed the Worcester breeding bird quiz *** - I might note, humbly, that Mark FOUND two-four of the Lark Sparrows I've seen on Assateague, depending on how you count the two today (same a s he had a week ago or not?). ======================================================================== To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================== ==========================================================================