Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 09:19:03 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Peter Webb Subject: Heron update Comments: cc: cdbird@ezy.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit About that YCNH sighting I reported: Unfortunately, the neighbors/friends who saw the bird in their yard generally only see them sporadically, for a few minutes at a time, not most of the day. The birds visit their yard for, of all things, EARTHWORMS! It seems that the young birds in the last few years learned to visit there to supplement their staple diet of crayfish, supplied by their parents from staked-out territories along the stream, with earthworms from a well-tilled backyard garden where there were no adults jealously guarding rights to the area. Even as adults, some of these birds are returning to snack on the "free" snacks they don't have to fight other adults for. But they only visit sporadically, and aren't nesting in that immediate area. Hence chances of seeing one there at any given moment are pretty slim. The pedestrian footbridge at Lake Roland ("Robert E. Lee Park" on the maps) would offer a better chance of seeing a Yellow-crowned Night-heron, although even that site hasn't been reliable the last couple of years. Perhaps the best place to try would be the wooded stream valley on the Johns Hopkins University campus. Elliot and Nancy Kirschbaum have seen nesting birds there the last couple of years and Elliot told me the birds were there again this year, seen just a day after "my" neighbors saw their bird. Contact Elliot, ekirschb@bcpl.net, for directions. As of this Sunday morning, I still haven't seen one here in my yard; prior to their nesting here, I only occasionally saw one as a fly-by, and that might very possibly be the way things are again here in my yard, since they didn't nest either here or in my next-door neighbor's yard last summer. The neighbor who DID see one earthworming this spring lives a block away and not within view from here. Pete Webb Baltimore, MD (USA) pew@niroinc.com (work, M-F 830-5) pwebb@bcpl.net (home, after 6) ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================