Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2002 13:44:56 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Rick Sussman Subject: Hughes Hollow, Saturday Oct. 26 Comments: To: voice@audubonnaturalist.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, I went over to Hughes Hollow, ostensibly to see if I could find the American Bittern reported on the Voice this week. I didn't realize that there was hunting going on, but as I approached along River Rd. the number and location of pick-up along the road quickly drew me to that conclusion. Anyway, I figured I was mostly safe if I stayed to the dikes, and I had driven all that way, so... Birds of interest for me included many RUSTY BLACKBIRDS in winter plumage, looking very dapper. An immature White-crowned Sparrow was my first for the season. A Winter Wren fed along the edge of the water, and a SORA called twice from the impoundment on the right (ker-weee, ker-weee) early shortly after I got there, but then not again. I'm not sure if it was in the first or second impoundment. Lots of stuff flying around, Ring-necked Ducks and Wood Ducks overhead, Red-headed Woodpeckers in the trees, along with Red-bellied, N. Flickers, Downys and a single Hairy and Pileated. Swamp Sparrows, Song Sparrows, lots of White-throats and Juncos, Brown Creeper, both kinglets in good numbers, a single Palm Warbler and lots of Yellow-rumps. Lots of Red-winged Blackbirds and E. Bluebirds, and a few E. Phoebes. On my way back to the car, close to the edge of the woods about 2/3 of the way back along the main dike, I caught sight of a beautiful female Rusty Blackbird, which I watched until something else caught my eye, the immature White-crowned Sparrow again. As I began to watch it, something behind me made a noise like kuk kuk kuk kuk, sort of like a Mallard makes. I turned to look, and was surprised to find a very beautiful juvenile AMERICAN BITTERN, stalking in a clump of water plants not far from shore (and only about 50 feet away). I watched it as long as I wanted as it fed, preened, stuck its head up in the air as only a bittern can. After a bit it exhausted the food supply in the small clump of plants it was in, and I watched as it appeared to swim across the channel to a larger clump of plants. I'm not certain if it was swimming or walking along the muddy bottom, but its body motion seemed to indicate to me that it was swimming! Sure wish I'd had the camera with me. And not another soul around to share the moment with... I'm going to look in one of my books to see what it says about bitterns swimming. It was a really beautiful bird, with a bluish blush of color above the base of the bill, between the strikingly yellow eyes, and no hint of a black neck streak. Rick Sussman Ashton,MD warblerick@aol.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================