Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 12:37:03 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding <MDOSPREY@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM> Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding <MDOSPREY@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM> From: Denise Ryan <denise_ryan@LCV.ORG> Subject: Bald Eagles South of Denton, MD Returning from a trip to DE to see the meteor shower I saw two adult bald eagles and 4 (2 first year and 2 second year) immature bald eagles along Rt. 404. Just South of milemarker 21.0 on the North-East side of the road. Two adults perched and calling in a row of trees overlooking a harvested corn field. The four immatures were in various places around the field taking short flights and returning to the field. We didn't stay long as traffic was heavy and our shoulder was meager. It was obviously private property. The following descriptions include a meteor shower report, an owl question and the birding report for Trap Pond State Park (Cypress Swamp) in Delaware. I took a camping trip to Trap Pond State Park outside of Laurel, DE, to watch the meteor shower on Sunday morning. Trap Pond was recommended by a link from the International Dark Skies Society. Excellent visibility and a sparsly lit parking lot allowed us to see approximately 1 meteor every 5 seconds starting at 4:05 a.m. all over the sky - we chose to face Southeast in our reclined beach chairs. Many instances of meteors so bright they easily eclipsed all other objects in the sky and cast shadows. Many meteors left glowing green trails and a few had red tails and there were several trails that lasted nearly a minute as previously reported. By 5:45 a.m. the show was still full strength at nautical twilight, but my companions were freezing and we had all become a bit blase after the glut of fabulous meteors. During the show around 5:00 a.m. we were greeted by the calls of a Great Horned Owl a long way off, later to be followed by another GHO near our location. Joining the chorus later sounded like 2-3 Barred Owls near by. Question - is it common for Barred owls to call when GHOs are also calling? I feel pretty confident about the calls as I had been listening to tapes of owl calls earlier in the evening. We continued with some lazy birding around our camp site from 7:00 - 8:15 a.m. Light fog on the pond. Before I give you the list of encounters - we enjoyed a visit from 4 angry river otters. I am guessing that we were standing on a bank frequented by the otters as the made a bee-line for exactly were we were standing. When they were about 25 feet from the shore, the repeatedly stuck their heads out of the water, looked at us and snorted or "snorked" blowing air and water. We snorted back for fun and the exchange continuted for about 1 minute. Frustrated, the otters continued farther down the shore and disappeared. I ran back to the camp to grab the camcorder, but the otters did not return. Birding list for the site: 1 Blue Heron 1 Red Bellied Woodpecker 1 immature Yellow-Bellied Sap Sucker 8 Golden Crowned Kinglets 3 Brown Creepers (1 seen, 2 calling) 2 Blue Jays 200 Canadian Geese 2 American Crows 2 Cardinals 5 Tufted Titmouse 3 Pied-billed Grebe 1 Common Loon Denise Ryan Washington, DC ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================