Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 19:12:54 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Ringler Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Robert Ringler Subject: Re: Wood Ducks in DC MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Gail, The same phenomenon happened years ago at the Baltimore Zoo, located in Druid Hill Park. During the Christmas Count the late Peggy Bohanan, who covered that territory, would check with the aviary people at the zoo to find out how many captive Wood Ducks they had. She would subtract that number from the total she counted in the waterfowl ponds and the result would be reported for the CBC. The high was 25 in 1976. At other times the wild flock would appear on Druid Lake which is outside the zoo. On January 25, 1985 I counted 85 Wood Ducks on the lake. Obviously these birds were thriving on the feed for the captive collection at the zoo. Bob Ringler ----- Original Message ----- From: Gail Mackiernan To: Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2001 8:25 AM Subject: Re: [MDOSPREY] Wood Ducks in DC > Hi all -- > > Speaking of Wood Ducks in DC-- Barry and I went to the zoo about 10 days ago. > We always do this when about to leave for a birding trip abroad, to see if > any of the species we're likely to see are at the zoo. Of course we also > like to look at the great waterfowl collection outside teh bird house. While > we were admiring the Smew (alas, not wild ones), Mandarin Duck and other > beauties, I noticed a LOT of Wood Duck in the ponds. "Boy, they certainly > have an excessive number of Wood Duck in the collection," I said to Barry... > At that moment, they came out to feed the ducks and all the 50 or or so Woodies > gracefuly took off and flew to the nearest food trough! Ooops -- seems as if > the zoo waterfowl ponds are now THE spot for wintering Wood Duck in DC, along > with some mooching Mallards. (No wonder we couldn't find any on the CBC). > > Yes, we saw a few birds which we hope to see in Thailand, as well -- Green > Magpie, Fairy Bluebird, Frogmouth... (And the Pandas, which were, not > unexpectly, completely asleep!) > > Cheers, Gail Mackiernan > Colesville, MD > > ======================================================================= > To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com > with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey > ======================================================================= > ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================