Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 22:54:14 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Matt Hafner Subject: MD/DE coastal birding Comments: cc: DE-BIRDS@pucc.princeton.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I birded the coast today with Zach Baer, my friend Dave, and two of Zach's friends. Dave and I started out at Assateague at dawn, where the Myrtles put on quite a show, with 3 Pine Siskins and an Orange-crowned Warbler making a showing. When Zach and his friends arrived, we were treated to an immature Red-headed Woodpecker. A Great Cormorant flew by with Double-crests early in the morning. A great surprise of the morning was being able to locate the LeConte's Sparrow of North Vaughn WMA. Not much else here though. West OC pond held a male Eurasian Wigeon hanging out in the wigeon group. Also present were a juv. Long-billed Dowitcher and lingering Little Blues and Tricolors. Ocean City Inlet had our first Purple Sandpipers of the year, and lots of boaters. Indian River Inlet had more Great Cormorants, and 5 Saltmarsh Sharp-tails in the bay marshes. Gordon's Pond held an Avocet and the pines around Silver Lake had Red-breasted Nuthatches and a Blackpoll Warbler. Cape Henlopen added Brown-headed Nuthatch and Black-bellied Plover to our day list. Prime Hook in the evening was a surprising success. We had upclose views of Pectoral and Stilt Sandpipers and a juv. Long-billed Dowitcher. We were able to locate a Ross's Goose in the thousands of Snows plus one bird that I believe to be a hybrid. It was smaller than the Snows with a Ross's rounded head, but the bill had a grin patch and wasn't quite small enough. That's the first I've seen like that. All in all, a great day. Matt Hafner College Park, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================