Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 22:53:08 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Steve Sanford Subject: British Ticks MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Elliot Kirschbaum, Gail Frantz, and I had a great time today with visiting British birder Tony Eveleigh on his first full day of birding in the USA. Early on he made a comment about getting a lot of "ticks." It took me a few moments to realize that he meant life-birds, not insects. He had about 15 lifers in the first hour or so. I forgot to get a count for the end of the day. We started at Soldiers Delight in western Baltimore County. It had a nice collection of well-seen, mostly summer-resident species: including Pine, Prairie, Black & White, and Hooded Warbler, Yellow-breasted Chat, Ovenbird, Field Sparrow, Indigo Bunting, as well as migrants such as lots of Myrtle Warblers, several Black-throated Blue Warblers, and a Black-throated Green Warbler. At Powell's Run Road we added Blue-winged Warbler and Swamp Sparrow. Then we added Parula Warbler at the Liberty Dam trail. Not surprisingly, one of the biggest thrills was Tony's life-sighting of a Scarlet Tanager there. Regrettably, Yellow-throated and Cerulean Warblers eluded us. Also, the wind kept orioles out of view. But, heck, we wouldn't want to have all the thrills on the first day. Tony remarked on how colorful our birds were on average compared to the birds at home in Great Britain. We heard many exclamations of "stunning!" and "superb!" throughout the day. It certainly heightened our appreciation of how beautiful our common birds such as Cardinals, Blue Jays, American Goldfinches, and Indigo Buntings are, not to mention the fairly common but seasonal warblers, tanagers, and orioles. We certainly look forward to more days birding with Tony this coming week. Steve Sanford tanager@bcpl.net Randallstown MD Baltimore County ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================