Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 16:43:07 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Laura Kammermeier Subject: Re: Little Bennett Regional Park, Mont. County (BARRED OWL) Comments: cc: Paul Kamms In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT 2 BARRED OWLS (1 with mouse) 1 nesting BLUE-GRAY GNATCHATCHER 1 WHITE EYED VIREO My family and I went birding in Little Bennett Regional Park on Saturday at 2 pm. Didn't expect to see much, being mid-day, but we caught GREAT and prolonged looks at TWO BARRED OWLS. My husband saw a glimpse of hte first and said "It's something BIG" (a hawk, maybe) and scouted it down. Turned out to be a BARRED OWL. This one sat in a perch for at least 5 minutes watching us and its surroundings. As we watched, the huge shadow of a SECOND BARRED OWL came over us and landed in front of us, with a MOUSE in its beak! This individual seemed to want to bring the mouse as lunch to the other one, but maybe was too leery of our presence (?) so it slowly moved from perch to perch for a while. We watched for about 10-12 minutes getting great views of the birds. These guys were found on the "no vehicle" section of Hyattsville Road where the road fords a stream (close but not at the Owl Ridge loop). Also right at the junction of Hyattsville Road and Prescott Road we saw a nesting Blue-gray gnatcatcher. Singing and sitting in nest. Heard others in the general area, too. Further in from there, we also saw and heard a White-eyed Vireo. We first heard its song, much like "chick-brr-ee chip," or just "chick-brr-chick" and scouted it. THen we saw the bird singing. It had greenish back and yellow sides, two white wing bars, black lores, and yellow above the black lores. Great birding for mid-day jaunt. Laura -- Laura Kammermeier Germantown, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================