Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 19:52:46 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Marshall Iliff Subject: Assateague & OC area - 10/18 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, I joined Mark Hoffman today on Assateague where a pretty good flight was underway at Bayside by 7:25. Mark kept the list, but I will touch on the highlights. No real rarities but some interesting birds. Summer birds seem to have almost completely yielded to the Temperate species, and any Neotropical migrant was a little treasure that I don't expect to see again for 6+ months. * Winter arrivals included my first Pine Siskins (two flyovers, Bayside and State Park North), Rusty Blackbird (one flyover at Bayside at dawn), Red-breasted Merganser (1 female-type flyby Bayside), and Vesper Sparrow (my first migrant of fall, State Park campground loops). * Late-ish birds included 1 Yellow-billed Cuckoo, 1 Bobolink, 2 Indigo Buntings, 1 Blue Grosbeak (Hoffman only), single Magnolia and Prairie warblers, a redstart (Hoffman only), a few Black-throated Blue Warblers, a Gray-cheeked Thrush (Iliff only). Western Palm Warblers seem to be well past peak - today I only saw about 6. Yellow Palms seem to be picking up, and we had two today to add to the two I had yesterday (my only other sighting this fall was 30 Sep). **NOTE** In the discussion of "Yellow Book" errata last summer, I forgot to mention that we messed up the Palm Warbler graphs (Appendix 1). I assume the thicker line was meant to stretch from mid to late October, not mid to late September as indicated, and that we simply put it in the wrong month. Thanks to Danny Bystrak who first pointed this out to me in the Fall of 1997. * Good counts included c. 3000 D.C. Cormorants flying south all day long, about 1200 Myrtle Warblers included 700+ in the dawn flight at Bayside, 18 White-crowned Sparrows in the State Park loops (Cape May had 115 on Monday). Kinglets seemed more prevalent today than anytime previously, and Hermit Thrushes, though generally scarce, were concentrated in a small area where we had 7 at once. A fair Brant flight was occurring, though we didn't total more than 100 for the day. Apparently there was a good movement of Brant on the Susquehanna R. w/ the passage of the front. * Lesser Black-backed Gulls seem to have finally arrived. After not seeing ANY all fall, I saw one adult on the beach at Assateague I. N.S. Headquarters. This bird was missing/growing most inner primaries (not visible) and had a very old 10th primary. This is the same area that on may have spent the winter last year - Jim saw it in October/November and we saw it again on 9 Jan 2000. A second adult Lesser Black-backed was sitting among Herring Gulls on the south jetty at Ocean City Inlet at 6:10 p.m. and presumably the same bird was seen on Skimmer I. in near darkness at 6:45 p.m.. This one had its inner primaries visibly growing in. * Common Terns have been VERY scarce since late September, and onyl on 8 Oct 2000 (Black-tailed Gull day) had I seen any (c. 15 among large offshore feeding flocks). Today one was roosting among 300+ Forster's Terns at Skimmer I. at dusk. * Other Skimmer I. birds included 31 oystercatchers, 131+ Royal Terns, 500+ Laughing Gulls, and hundreds of large gulls (Herring and GBB, did not count accurately). * Despite their arrival on Monday at the Bridge-Tunnel in VA, I failed to find any Purple Sandpipers at the inlet today. About 35 turnstones and 60 Sanderlings were present though. Best, Marshall Iliff miliff@aol.com Ocean City, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================