Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2002 07:45:25 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Norman Saunders Subject: Re: Mystery Heron/Egret (very long) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Phil, I want to thank you for the most impressive array of materials in your response to my original message. First off, to my knowledge, no one else located a similar bird, but allow me to elaborate just a bit. We were never able to definitively exclude Tricolored Heron because of the extreme distance and heavy heat waves through which we viewed the bird. There was another response to my query, off the list, from Mark Garland, who noted that Tricolored Herons often used these sorts of maneuvers--running about, flashing wings, etc--while hunting for prey. Now Fran and I have seen a LOT of Tricolors in our twice a year visits to Florida but I cannot recall ever having seen them use this particular feeding strategy. Perhaps this has to do with the types of habitats in which we have watched them (Everglades non-tidal marshes such as Loxahatchee) and/or the relative abundance of prey. Nonetheless, a week after we witnessed the behavior noted in my earlier message to the list, we saw a pair of Tricolored Herons fishing in the very shallow flats just north of Skimmer Island, on a falling tide. They were running about very actively and flashing their wings at the same time and pausing only momentarily to grab a small fish from the water then continue on with their "dance." As much as I would love to discover a new species for the Maryland list, I was forced to conclude that Mark was probably correct and both Fran and I added a new observed behavior to our sense of how Tricolored Herons behave. Thanks for your research, Phil! It was a fascinating read! Hope to see you guys at this year's fall rarities count on November 9. Norm ======================= Norm Saunders Colesville, MD 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 ======================================================================= =========================================================================