Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 22:24:58 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: David Mozurkewich Subject: Where'd they go? In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I snuck out at 10:30 last night (Monday, 23 September) and spent about 20 minutes staring at the nearly full moon. A steady stream of birds were heading south. I figure I saw 4 to 5 birds per minute. Now, that may not sound like a lot of birds, but I assure you it is. Since the moon only covers about one two hundredth of the distance across the sky, that works out to something like a dozen birds per second passing by. If this continued all night, a HALF MILLION PASSERINES were within sight of my house! wow. Where'd they go? I caught a few hours sleep and was out before dawn. A quick look at the moon revealed nothing. But it was perhaps too quick a look since I was in a hurry to be someplace interesting before sunup. And I was. Just as it was getting light. The field north of the parking lot at the Oxen Hill Farm, PG county. From then until about 8:30, this wonderful sunny edge produced 3 Magnolia Warblers, 2 Black-throated Blue Warblers, 1 Redstart, 1 Yellowthroat, 1 Swainson's Thrush, 2 Scarlet Tanagers, a couple of Indigo Buntings and the locals. Wade Steven -- who is quickly becoming convinced that my praise of this location is some sort of evil joke -- saw a Chestnut-sided Warbler. That brings the total count for the sunrise flock to 8 warblers of 5 species. In the parking lot on my way out, I ran into a small warbler flock containing one each Black-throated Green, Yellow, Parula, Black and White and Overbird. So the diversity was not too bad. Total numbers, however, were disgraceful. At least compared to what I thought it should be based on what I thought happened last night. So where did they go? Dave David Mozurkewich Seabrook, PG MD USA mozurk @ bellAtlantic.net P.S. For you county listers: If anyone is still looking for a Wild Turkey in PG county, this field is the place to be. I can never find a turkey on demand. But they've been here on 4 of my last 5 visits. 4 birds in the north-east corner of the field between 8 and 8:15. They spook real easy. ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================