Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 19:47:09 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Mary Gustafson Subject: "Dark-bellied" Brant in Delaware Comments: To: de-birds@princeton.edu, jerseybi@Princeton.EDU MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm having mail problems, sorry for any errors--I've typed this four times and the machine keeps locking up! Bruce Peterjohn found an adult Dark-bellied Brant (Branta bernicla bernicla) at Indian River Inlet today in a large flock of Pale-bellied Brant (Branta bernicla hrota). Although the AOU and ABA have not split these subspecies they are considered separate species elsewhere. Briefly, the Dark-bellied Brant is easily picked out head-on by the dark chocolate belly that extends from the breast to just behind the legs. The flanks are scalloped with white much as on our Pale-bellied Brant, but the contrast is greater with the darker belly. The back is slightly darker than the Pale-bellied Brant, and the Dark-bellied is slightly larger than most of the Pale-bellieds. The Dark-bellied Brant was feeding in the overflow campground on the NW side of Indian River Inlet from about 730 to 9 AM today (Sunday November 17). At 9, all the brant flew. Other birds in the area included an adult Black-headed Gull. We'll try to get some photos up shortly, but we wanted to get the word out as quick as we could. I'll also try to get a pelagic report out shortly as well! Mary Gustafson mary@paulagics.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================