Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 19:42:19 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Marshall Iliff Subject: Connecticut Warbler in Annapolis 9/28 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, Taking some of Jim's wisdom to heart, I set out this morning on a shop-till-I-drop, no sleep till Brooklyn, search for my Anne Arundel, yea r, and yard Connecticut. The areas surrounding my house are mostly overgrow n fields reverting to woodland, so the habitat is perfect. That I haven't had one here yet was only a product of too much time in school in the falls a nd too much time running around to other parts of MD once I got a license. Actually, I have had two "probable" Connecticuts here over the years - th e first was listed as my lifer Mourning for a while, and the second one was just too brief a look. Both were at the perfect time of year in perfect habitat, and have always pained me. Starting at about 8:30, I walked every field and hedgerow on our property , and played judicious screech-owl tape at every stop. After tapping out t he possibilities in my true yard, I wandered off property a bit to a favorit e stream valley (where I had seen my lifer "Mourning"). No dice. Finally, I worked my way over to the Bywater Rd. fields, home of the famous Lark Spa rrow from the winter. Last December, while walking those fields with Gail Mackiernan and Barry Cooper, Gail remarked that they looked like a great place for a Connecticut. On my third stop there I heard and immediately recognized the chip, and was soon enjoying a very confiding (and very aggravated) Connecticut Warbler. It chipping and excitedly hopped around for about 3-4 minutes. The habitat was an overgrown open field with no canopy layer. The bird w as in a small island of wild cherry trees (3) with large pokeberries and blackberry bushes beneath them. Other bird sincluded 2 House Wrens, a yellowthroat, and several cardinals. I had a tape recorder along and made a recording of the chip note, which the bird gave c. 15x on tape. There is a lot of background noise, so the qua lity of the tape is not great, but learning this chip will be very useful for those hoping to find a Connecticut in MD. To me it does sound similar to an empid (Least/Willow) "whit" note, but is not nearly so abrupt. It is far more liquid, with a softer introduction and ending, better verbalized as "quep". It sound slike no other warbler that I am familiar with, and qui te different from yellowthroat, Mourning, and MacGillivray's, all of which m ight be confused with a Connecticut, especially if they are behaving typically and skulking in the brush giving only brief views. I don't have any resource s to put the recording online, but if anyone does I could perhaps send a copy of the tape. ...Y2K is #309 and counting... This was otherwise a pretty dull day for migrants. Approximate numbers w ere 3 redstarts, 2 Black-and-whites, 1 Blackpoll, 1 Pine, 8 Magnolia, and 10 yellowthroats. This afternoon, starting about 3:30 p.m., I noticed a significant goose flight overhead, and counted about 15 flocks totaling 2 50 birds or so. The largest group contained 89. More exciting, the first g roup (45) included one small individual, presumably _hutchinsii_, which was a first for my yard and perhaps the earliest ever for MD. Despite perfect sky conditions, I saw NO hawks, even high, except for one kettle of 45 Broad-wingeds that passed low overhead, a high count for my yard. There were lots of gulls milling about at the limit of vision though... Best, Marshall Iliff miliff@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 ======================================================================== ==========================================================================