Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 18:24:20 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Matt Hafner Subject: Rt. 309 birding 11/9 and 11/11 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On the way to the rarity roundup, Kevin Fehskens, Zach Baer and I birded the first Rt. 309 pond coming from Rt. 213. On 11/9, as you turn on Rt. 309 from Rt. 213, less than a mile up the road, there is a house on the left. Right in front of the house we had a small flock of starlings and cowbirds (about 50 birds) that contained a Common Grackle, a male Red-wing, and a male Brewer's Blackbird. What a way to start the weekend. We searched through the Canada Goose flock for something different, but had no luck. There was however a massive (many thousand birds) blackbird flock on the far side of the pond. Ducks at the pond included Mallard, Black, Wigeon, Pintail, and Shoveler. Today, we started at the south end of Rt. 309 at the pond by Rt. 480. There was a small race Canada at this pond. Then we met up with Jim Stasz at Pemberton Manor and found atleast 2 Ross's Geese in with the couple thousand Snows. On to the northernmost 309 pond mentioned above. The massive blackbird flock was still present, but the small flock was not. However, Jim managed to find a male Brewer's feeding on the far shore of the pond. The rest of us however were distracted by the near adult Golden Eagle cruising over our heads. The ducks had thinned out, with only 1 Pintail and 1 Green-winged Teal and the geese still didn't have anything different. What a great way to end the weekend. I'll let Mark discuss the Roundup hopefully he'll post a summary. 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 ======================================================================= =========================================================================