Date: Tue, 8 May 2001 20:14:18 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Les Roslund Subject: Western Maryland Birds of 5/7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Having spent Sunday night in Grantsville, I had a chance to check out a few Garrett County birds from 7:00 to 8:00 on Monday. Being five minutes away from New Germany State Park made the choice of birding sites quite easy. A single stop, at an overflow campground (that was empty) near one of the park entrances gave me all the action that I could handle for the available hour. First bird seen was a Black-throated Green Warbler; then I became aware that the woods beside me was practically crawling with Oven Birds - not calling, just giving out with a faint 'peep' sound. Soon the Blue-headed Vireos took over. There must have been at least a dozen. Five of them were vocalizing with the widest range of sounds that I have ever heard from that species (granted , I have not previously ever seen that many of them in such ideal habitat for them.) While watching the Blue-heads, I became aware of a strange-to-me regularly repeated gutteral-sounding call. It was coming from ground level, at a distance from me such that I could not see the source, but I rather suspect I was hearing calls of Ruffed Grouse. When I walked towards the calling (kind of skulking through the leafy-floored woods as quietly as possible) the calling would stop for awhile, and then resume at some greater distance away. Never did see those birds. (I would welcome confirmation or refutation Ruffed Grouse likelihood of being there and calling at that time of day). Another warbler also had me totally fooled - I listened and listened and looked and looked - never getting a view, but getting lots of an unrecognized sound. Guess I will have to spend more time in that area so as to become familiar with those birds. Black-capped Chickadees were abundant, and singing cheerily throughout my visit. A couple of White-breasted Nuthatches were calling too. Les Roslund/Talbot MOS Hotline Lroslund@bluecrab.org Talbot County Easton, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================