Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 00:25:00 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Peter Webb Subject: Stoakley Road 7 Woodpeckers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit As Kyle Rambo posted, the Baltimore Bird Club visited Pax River NAS with wonderful views of the Northern Shrike, Horned Larks, Snow Buntings, and Lapland Longspurs. Afterwards, we visited the Seabreeze Restaurant but missed the Kelp Gull seen earlier in the day, then went to Stoakley Road in Calvert County (thanks to Sue Ricciardi for finding the site and numerous people posting about it on MDOsprey). Even before getting out of the cars, we saw Red-headed Woodpeckers and saw over the next hour about 4 adults, being highly visible and "chittering" to each other. There were also two or three Pileated Woodpeckers vocal and visiting at least two potential nesting sites, going into holes in large snags and then coming back out. We cleaned up on all seven species of woodpeckers normally found in Maryland, with a heard-only Hairy, one Downy, one Red-bellied, one Sapsucker, and numerous Flickers. It was quite a show, and on top of all that, we met the local landowner, who wants to keep it all as is, despite some efforts by County road maintenance people to trap the beavers making the standing water with their dam-works. We left an email address with the land owner and hope to mobilize some environmental groups and the M.O.S. to aid in his efforts to preserve the wonderful habitat. Our only disappointment was at the Seabreeze, where the local staff was overwhelmed by a large party arriving shortly before we did, and by the absence of the feature Kelp Gull during our early afternoon visit there. Quite a day! Pete Webb Baltimore, Md (USA) pwebb@bcpl.net (home, after 6) pew@niroinc.com (work, 830-5 M-F) ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================