Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 22:13:59 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Marshall Iliff Subject: Eastern Shore birds 11/9/00 Comments: cc: voice@capaccess.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit MDOsprey, Did some Eastern Shore birding on my way down to Ocean City today. A couple interesting things included: * 2 _hutchinsii_ Canada Geese ("Richardson's Goose") at the Rte. 309 pond in Queen Anne's County, along with 3000 Canada Geese, 4 Tundra Swans, 10 N. Pintails, 25 Ruddy Ducks, and a male Ring-ncked Duck. As is often the case with _hutchinsii_, I was struck first by the pale grayish back w/o brown tones and the broader pale edging on the back. Sibley's new guide gives excellent treatment to this race but may under-represent this back color difference. They also appear to hve a steeper forhead, a paler breast, and a broader white cheek patch, in addition to being much smaller, shorter necked, and smaller billed. This is a potential split so birders in MD should pay more attention to this group, which is even more common in the state than Ross's Goose (c. 1 in 5000 Canada Geese, I would estimate). * Across the street from the Rte. 309 pond was an American Golden-Plover w/ 47 Killdeer. Having spent the last two weeks in Hawaii I was struck by how shocking different this bird looked from Pacific Golden-Plover -- no golden tones, an almost black back, much smaller spotting, a shorter bill, rounder head, and shorter legs. Surprisingly, the only previous November Golden-Plover I have seen in MD was at this exact location in 1997 (2 Nov), although it is not really surprisingly late for this species. The Rte. 309 pond is about 2 mi east along Rte. 309 as ones travels from Rte. 213 in estern Queen Anne's County. It is the first large pond on your left and about 3 mi before the town of Starr. * 1 im male Surf Scoter at Ridgely W.W.T.P., Caroline Co., along with Ruddy Ducks in the south cell. This is the second Caroline County record the first being a group of 3 along with 17 Black Scoters that I saw 20 Oct 1997 from Kingston Landing. A surprising bird to see at Ridgely. * While crossing the Rte. 404 bridge eastbound over the Choptank River I noticed a roadkilled bird on the right shoulder. I always test myself on roadkilled bird ID and take note of what my first impression is -- on this medium-sized bird I saw flanks w/ orangeish barring and only one bird came to mind. It seemed so ludicrous that I detored c. 2 mi to turn around and check, and to my surprise, I was correct. A Chuckar! How it ended up roadkilled on a bridge I have no idea - if anyone knows of game farms nearby that might be the source of this bird, I'd be interested. It was unbanded... There were a number of pipits around at many field locations. 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 ======================================================================= =========================================================================