Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 19:50:52 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Danny Bystrak Subject: Avocet, Golden Plover, Brant, Great White?, Nighthawk MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Yesterday, October 1, 2001, there was a brant at the jetty in Chesapeake Beach feeding frantically in the waves. Considering that sept 29 is the earliest MD record, and brants don't usually show themselves on this side of the bay, i wonder about the "wildness" of this bird, but anyway, there he was. On September 30,2001, while watching over Reed Marsh and the S. end of Jug Bay (A.K.A. my backyard) i saw an AMERICAN AVOCET flying leasurely(ly?) southward. This was at 2:37 pm. 11 minutes later, 2 A. GOLDEN PLOVERS flew around for a few minutes before heading north. 2 more good yard birds. Now this one will have to remain in the urban legend category, but this A.M. (Oct.2,2001) at 8:30 there was a large white bird with a yellow beak perched in a tree across the river (this would be P.G. Co., just north of Selby Landing). Lately i have been seeing Great Egrets there pretty regularly, and the first thing that struck me was that it was too big for that. It sat with a posture that reminded me of a Great Blue more than an egret. Unfortunately, i had to be elsewhere at 9 am and had to leave him sitting there. Sadly, when i checked again at 3 pm there was no trace. So i eagerly got online to check OSPREY to see if the Great White was gone from the Balt. area, and it appears it is! Oh well, we'll never know. Oh and i saw a C NIGHTHAWK this evening over Jug Bay (Oct 2,2001). Gettin' late. danny bystrak bristol, AA Co. MD wiwr@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 ======================================================================= =========================================================================