Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 13:25:14 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Norman Saunders Subject: Monk Parakeet in Anne Arundel County MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Last Tuesday's Voice reported a Monk Parakeet not too far from Laurel so Fran and I decided to try our luck on the bird even though it had received no further play this past week on MDOsprey. Sure enough, the bird is there and building a nest, perhaps, as Paul O'Brien noted, an exercise in wishful thinking. We observed the bird from 9 to 9:45 am at the reported location, Red Clay Road just south of Rt. 198 and about half a mile or so inside the western boundary of Anne Arundel County. From 198 turn south onto Red Clay Road then left into the parking lot of the Target department store. Drive to the NW corner of the parking lot and check the top of the second power pole on the west side of Red Clay south of the intersection with Rt. 198. You should immediately see the messy stick nest at the top of the power pole and, hopefully, you'll see the bird itself in a short time. When we arrived there was no sign of the bird but it shortly emerged from inside the nest (entrance hole on the bottom) and flew to some nearby trees where it was feeding on ripening buds and pulling small twigs and branches out for the nest. We watched the bird repeatedly moving between the nest and the trees, both feeding and nest-building. It was vocalizing often and quite loudly. Unfortunately there was no evidence this morning of a second bird. It might be a good idea for others to let MDOsprey know if they do happen on a second bird here along with the first. I got about 20 or so photos and Fran says she'll post one on the MOS website. Best, Norm Saunders ================================= Norman C. Saunders Colesville, Montgomery County, Maryland marshhawk@att.net ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================