Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 09:51:09 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Walter Ellison Subject: Eastern NEck NWR Big Sit MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi All, The first Eastern Neck NWR Big Sit was conducted at the parking lot at the north end of Eastern Neck Island from 6:40 AM to 6:00 PM yesterday (13 October). Peter Mann, Nancy Martin and myself counted 56 species for the day. It took some will power to stick around until 6:00 because our last new bird, a Great Egret, arrived just before 3:00. The cloudy threatening weather for much of the day seemed to really dampen bird activity, especially in the afternoon, and rain to the north may have limited the number of migrants headed our way the night before and during the day. Another drawback was the lack of a low tide worthy of the name, the flats remained drowned throughout the day. The best bird in the area was not in the "magic circle" area. I walked south along the road to see if I could find a phoebe on the wire, ostensibly to divine if I could see it from the circle, leaving Nancy in charge of the Sit. On the way back I spished up a White-crowned Sparrow, my first of the season. It had white lores, an orange yellow (not pink) bill, and duller breast and flank coloration than the "standard" white-crown - it was a Gambel's. A nice find, now why couldn't it have visited the circle? Our list follows in taxonomic order: Common Loon 1 Double-crested Cormorant 59 Great Blue Heron 11 Great Egret 1 Turkey Vulture 16 Snow Goose 11 Canada Goose ca. 1100 Mute Swan 8 Wood Duck 6 Am. Black Duck 31 Mallard 13 Green-winged Teal 1 Greater Scaup 5 Lesser Scaup 40 Osprey ca. 10 Bald Eagle 6 ad 6 imm Sharp-shinned Hawk 17 Red-shouldered Hawk 1 Red-tailed Hawk 1 American Kestrel 1 Killdeer 1 Laughing Gull hard to count, 100-150 Ring-billed Gull ditto, 60-80 Herring Gull 11 Great Black-backed Gull 19 Caspian Tern 3 Royal Tern 20 Common Tern 9 Forster's Tern 77 Mourning Dove 6 Great Horned Owl 1 Belted Kingfisher 1 Red-bellied Woodpecker 2 N. Flicker 7 Blue Jay 229 (all counted southbound, at least 140 in return flight north) Am. Crow ca. 20 Fish Crow 31 [crow (sp) not counted] Tree Swallow 400 N. Rough-winged Swallow 1 Carolina Wren 3 Ruby-crowned Kinglet 7 Eastern Bluebird 10 American Robin 30 N. Mockingbird 5 Eur. Starling 275 Yellow-rumped (Myrtle) Warbler 36 Yellow Palm Warbler 2 Chipping Sparrow 1 Song Sparrow 8 Swamp Sparrow 7 N. Cardinal 1 Red-winged Blackbird ca. 500 Common Grackle 4 Brown-headed Cowbird 22 House Finch 5 Am. Goldfinch 4 It was remarkable to see how birdlife changed through the day, at times it seemed we would have swallows around us for the rest ofr the day then they would disappear, the pulses of Forster's Terns between river and bay, the movements of blackbirds, and the Blue Jay migration followed much the same pattern. Good Birding, Walter Ellison MD/DC Atlas Coordinator - MOS 23460 Clarissa Rd Chestertown, MD 21620-3645 410-778-9568 rossgull@crosslink.net "A person who is looking for something doesn't travel very fast." - E. B. White ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================