Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 21:14:12 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Marshall Iliff Subject: Eurasian Collared-Doves REALLY close to MD MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, Today (21 Aug) I did some birding in Worcester County, MD, but decided to stray north to Delaware to check out the Eurasian Collared-Doves in Selbyville, Sussex County. I found them with little difficulty right at the Rte. 54/Williams Rd. intersection where at least a pair was hanging close by the house at the northeast corner of that intersection. I also had one bird a couple blocks away at the intersection of Walnut & Williams (actually one street east of Williams -- no road sign). My suspicion was that this was a third bird but I will need to wait for the photos to come back to try to look for individual differences. This location is on the south side of Selbyville and no more than 1/2 mi from the Maryland line. At one point I could look out my left window and see the doves and look out my right window and see the treeline in Maryland. However, I see little reason for these doves to stray south into MD, since they are town birds and there is no habitat to the south which is cornfield. Still, Allen Deward's feeders are no more than 1.5 mi away, so his next yard bird may be a first state record. The two I saw together we obviously a pair so maybe their offspring will show more wanderlust. Interestingly, two Eur. Collared-Doves have been found at Magotha Rd. & Rte. 600 in southern Northampton Co., VA. We are sandwiched. I have long picked Hurlock as my favorite Collared-Dove town. I will continue to do so, though I acknowledge that the lack of birder activity there makes it more likely that Silver Spring, Bethesda, or some busier area will get the first record. I will still pick the little Eastern Shore towns, which may already have breeding Collared-Doves for all we know... Best, Marshall Iliff PS- Thanks to Matt Hafner for alerting me to these birds. *********************** Marshall Iliff miliff@aol.com Annapolis, MD ************************ ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================