Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 09:40:40 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Gail Mackiernan Subject: Back from Thailand! Hi everyone -- I just got back from a birding trip to Thailand, via five days in England where we did little because everything is shut due to the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak. Barry is still there with his mother, returns Tuesay. Thailand was great, saw lots of birds (over 350 species) and lots of new ones (over 200 were new for me), including two pittas, hornbills, trogons (theirs are primarily red in color), etc. etc. I will be doing a trip rep=ort and posting it on Urs Geiser's web site, for anyone interested in a trip =to SE Asia, and a country easy to bird, very inexpensive, very good roads an=d infrastructure etc. (Plus wonderful Thai food!) I only saw one new bird =in England, but that was a good one -- Great Bittern. Enough of non-Maryland -- when I left almost no birds were singing, now t=here is a real dawn chorus (since I am still jet-lagged it is no problem getti=ng up for a dawn chorus!). Robins are in the neighborhood. The major sign of spring, however, is the Screech Owl which has been "singing" all night si=nce I got back, always from the same tree, and making his bubbling call over =and over, about every 45 seconds. Hope he attracts a mate soon! Cheers, looking forward to some days afield here soon...when I recover! 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 ======================================================================= =========================================================================