Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 12:10:54 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Gail Frantz Subject: Balto County-Great Crested Flycatcher's Single Parenting MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit We were gone a few days so I don't know exactly when she arrived. By the time we returned she'd already started carrying nesting material into the 9' high Screech Owl/Kestrel box that's attached to our kid's old, rusty play set. She appeared to be incubating the last 2 weeks or so but last night at dusk there was a flurry of activity in & out of the box. Today's bright sunlight shows her to be carrying insects. We've never seen a second bird. The only detailed info I could locate about this species was from Life Histories of North American Flycatchers...and Their Allies by A.C. Bent (this delightful old reference book lists the Great Crested F as Northern Flycatcher.) Mr. Bent writes that these birds usually lay anywhere from 4 to 8 eggs with 5 or 6 eggs being the most common number. Both parents feed the young and one Henry Mousley noted that during one of his observations the female fed the young 118 times while the male fed them 42. This bird's really going to have to hustle! After the young have (hopefully) fledged I can't wait to see if there's a bit of snake skin woven into the nest. She takes her time entering the box with the goodies and her lovely, gentle "wheep" call is frequent. Since our windows are open we can hear her easily throughout the house. Gail Frantz Reisterstown, MD guineabird@aol.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================