Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 07:34:10 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Steve Sanford Subject: Jug Bay/Merkle WMA 5/6 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I birded Jug Bay (PG Co side) to Merkle WMA Sunday 5/6 with Shireen Gonzaga and Dot Gustafson. Migrants were scarce (surprise! surprise?), but we did manage to get 14 species of warblers with the stars being Hooded (mainly at the Black Walnut trail area by the blind) and Prothonotary (mainly at the wooden bridge at Mattaponi Creek) with a fair number of Yellow-throated Warblers at various spots. We had two Summer Tanagers engaging in a contest of song along the north side of old Croom Airport, one of which we finally got a good look at. We only had one Blue Grosbeak, at the same location, and amazingly no Prairie Warblers anywhere. Almost all our shorebirds were at the pond at Merkle. Merkle also had at least 5 Bobolinks, probably a lot more. Terns were very scarce and hard to ID positively. Great Blue Heron was the only wader. There was a wonderful patch of Lady Slippers in full bloom about 1/4 mile south of the Mattaponi bridge on the right, with a few more by the Merkle boardwalk. A partial list: Greater Yellowlegs 2 Lesser Yellowlegs 2+ Spotted Sandpiper 3 Least Sandpiper 5+ Caspian Tern (or Royal?) 2 Forster's Tern (?) 2 Ruby-throated Hummingbird 1 Pileated Woodpecker 1 Acadian Flycatcher ~5 Eastern Phoebe 5+ Great Crested Flycatcher 1 Eastern Kingbird 3+ Purple Martin ~20 at Merkle Tree Swallow ~50 Northern Parula ~10 Yellow Warbler 3+ Chestnut-sided Warbler 1 Yellow-rumped Warbler ~10 Yellow-throated Warbler 4+ Pine Warbler 2 Blackpoll Warbler 1 Black-and-white Warbler 2 American Redstart ~10 Prothonotary Warbler 3 Ovenbird ~5 Common Yellowthroat (one had a very odd song at the Jug Bay boat launch) Hooded Warbler ~5 Yellow-breasted Chat only 1! Summer Tanager 2+ Scarlet Tanager 5+ Blue Grosbeak only 1 Indigo Bunting lots Bobolink 5-25 (?) Orchard Oriole 1 76 species total ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================