Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 18:30:29 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Les Roslund Subject: Pacific Loon on Tuesday 5/22 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ospreyers - The Pacific Loon was present and cooperative in good lighting this afternoon from 2:00 until 2:45 (the time I departed). This is a bird that indeed exceeds one's expectations! Marking details are not fully captured by any of the usual birding guides. I carried the 2nd edition National Geographic Guide - which surely did not do full justice to this bird, but turned out to catch the essence better than either Sibley's or the Golden Book. Back home, examination of Harrison's SEABIRDS revealed a pretty good job by that one - but the bird is really the star. With the excellent lighting of early afternoon, the purple patch of the throat could be distinguished, as could the set of verticle lines on the neck in back of the throat patch. But the precise hue of the crown of the head and nape of the neck escaped most of the artists. This bird carries a more buffy tone than that shown by National Geographic - the Harrison rendition captures that part best, but still does not quite make it - the bird's plumage is just more elegant than the art work shows. The Harrison text refers to this as being a somewhat chunky bird (as far as such loons go), and that was indeed apparent today, but the chunkiness is not that apparent in any of the artwork. The horizontal bill positioning was shown by this bird; readily distinguished from the upward tilt of the Red-throated Loon. My special thanks to Michael O'Brian, who happened to be scanning the Ocean City Inlet with a group he was leading at the time I arrived. His group had attained their thorough viewing of the Loon, and were looking at other things, but he quite cooperatively aimed me towards this life list bird - hence found within 30 seconds of the time that my scope was set up. Life list birds aren't too hard to find with that kind of help. 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 ======================================================================= =========================================================================