Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 13:07:23 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Paul O'Brien Subject: Upper Watts Branch Park for 4/25 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The rain kept me indoors, but the windows still work. A few minutes ago I heard a Great Crested Flycatcher in the woods south of my house. As I listened, it worked its way past the house to the north and was soon gone. This behavior illustrates the pattern that I believe many migrants display here. It has long been obvious that migrants show up along the Potomac and in places like Rock Creek Park a day or two before they get here, unless there is a general fallout in the region. I believe that the migrants don't simply stay in one place for several days before moving northward on a good flight night. Instead, I think they forage while following habitat in a generally northward direction until the good weather conditions permit another night flight. For Upper Watts Branch that means they come upstream until they run out of habitat, which, fortunately, is just a few hundred yards upstream from my back yard. The corner of Fordham and Princeton turns out to be the end of the line and the migrants accumulate there. I'll try to keep you posted. Paul O'Brien Rockville, Mont. Co., MD pobrien776@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 ======================================================================= =========================================================================