Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 12:23:51 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Rick Sussman Subject: Re: Western Tanager in Sandy Spring MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Gail, Stan, et al., The WESTERN TANAGER was still being seen shortly after you left, when I arrived at about 9 AM. Norm and Fran, and Rob were there, and just as I reached the treeline to the nursery the bird popped out and I heard Norm say "here it is". I rushed to the nursery and found the bird, perched in a tree eating English Ivy berries, and in good sunlight. Norm and Fran both had (really nice) Nikon digital cameras, and Fran got at least one good photo of the bird, which hopefully they will post to the state web-site. We last saw the bird shortly after 9 AM, as it disappeared into a clump of ivy. Much further searching did not turn up the bird, but it seemed that all of the robins, waxwings, and bluebirds had disappeared too. My advice is look and listen for flocks of robins and the bird should be among them. As Gail said, it looked very much like the winter plumaged adult male in Sibley, and that is what I would say it was, rather than an immature bird. A nice find for the Triadelphia CBC (but not unprecedented). From early indications, it appears that we had 65 observers, and 94 species; highlights, besides the tanager were 8 Long-eared Owls (Montgomery County), and a Rough-legged Hawk (in Howard County), 1 Horned Lark and 1 Northern Bobwhite (Montgomery County), and a (seemingly) high number of American Pipits in Howard County. The finder of the WETA was Dave Pardoe (and Elaine) and his party (or maybe just the 2 of them?). Anyway, Happy Holidays to all, and happy hunting for those rarities! Rick Sussman Ashton,MD warblerick@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 ======================================================================= =========================================================================