Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 19:04:07 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Norm Saunders Subject: Eastern Shore Birding MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Fran and I left Wednesday morning to head down to Ocean CIty for the Christmas Count the following day. First good bird of Wednesday was a sapsucker that flew across the road in front of us just east of Salisbury--a new Wicomico County bird! Our first formal stop was at Alan Deward's feeders where we enjoyed great looks at the Rufous Hummingbird. Our quarter of an hour at Alan's feeders produced fourteen other species of birds including a flyover flock of about 100 Snow Geese. Thanks to Alan for keeping all of us posted periodically about the status of "his" hummingbird! Ocean Pines Lake yielded 11 species of waterfowl, including at least ten Redheads and one dozing Wood Duck. Also there was an adult Lesser Black-backed Gull taking its ease on the ice. From there we went to E.A. Vaughn in hopes of finding the Common Teal that had been reported just a few days previously. Alas, both ponds were become frozen hard and no waterfowl at all were present. We did see a first-winter White-crowned Sparrow along the entrance road as we left the WMA. Next stop was Ocean CIty Inlet where we saw four Harlequin Ducks, a female Common Eider, a half-dozen or so Purple Sandpipers, Northern Gannets, Long-tailed Ducks, long skeins of scoter sp's but with a surprising shortage of Bonaparte's Gulls. Light was fading fast as we stopped along the bayshore between 3rd and 4th streets for a quick look at Skimmer Island. The best bird here was a Great Cormorant on one of the bouys in Ocean City Bay. Thursday (Christmas Count day) began early with some owling. The relatively small area we were able to check yielded a pair of vocalizing Great Horned Owls and 7 Eastern Screech-Owls. Nice start to a cold, cold day! During the morning we birded Sinepuxent Bay from the Verazzano Bridge, the boat launch area at the western end of the bridge, the wetland area behind the NPS Visitor Center, and the field, wood, and marsh across the road from the visitor center. After lunch we made a quick trip to Rum Point Golf Course followed by a longish walk through a heavily wooded area behind the DNR Headquarters on Rt. 611. Best birds included an early a.m. Peregrine Falcon right at the boat launch and later on seen hassling a group of about ten decoys. Needless to say the decoys weren't impressed. We had good numbers of Meadowlarks, the first time we've seen this species in this locale of our count area, a nice flock of 30 or so White-crowned Sparrows, along with Song, Swamp, Field, Savannah, White-throated and a remarkable pair of Seaside Sparrows. Rum Point GC yielded some intriguing birds, namely a Great Cormorant sitting alongside an open pond along with a flock of about 50 Canada Geese, and a flyby immature Brown Pelican, one of probably two birds, both of which were seen by a number of observers throughout the day. Fran and I tallied 64 species for the day. Our area (South Point) had 100 species (thanks to the excellent leadership of Dave Mozurkewich) and the count as a whole had 151 species--a great number considering the cold, the blustery winds, and the howling 15-minute snow storm that hit about mid-morning. The funniest point of the day came at the worst part of the blizzard--the snow was flying parallel with the ground and Fran and I were fighting our way across an open frozen-over marsh trying to get to some shelter of trees about 100 yards away. Suddenly my phone started to ring. It was Mike Bowen, also counting in the South Point area with his wife Joy. He was just checking to make sure they weren't the only maniacs out playing in the snow...grin. Today we finished off our Eastern Shore birding with a stop at the Sparks Road fields Marshall has discussed in past postings. We had there a flock of about 150 Horned Larks, at least 10 Lapland Longspurs, and a lone Snow Bunting. And now comes the snow storm....... Best, Norm ======================= Norm Saunders Colesville, Montgomery County, MD marshhawk@worldnet.att.net ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================