Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 16:00:55 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Rob Hilton Subject: Re: Short-eared Owl at National Airport Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Following up on Paul Pisano's post on MDOsprey, both he and I were at Gravelly Point (Arlington, Virginia) after we saw the owl from Hains Point. The radar structure Paul refers to (it has orange/red and white paint on it) is very close to the edge of the airport. We both are confident that when the bird flew in front of the tower to evade the Peregrine Falcon it flew over the shoreline and into DC airspace. Several people looked for the owl from Hains Point on Sunday morning for a little while and didn't see it. Nor did we see the Red-throated Loon Mike Bowen saw on Saturday afternoon from Hains Point. Near The Awakening statue I did find an adult Lesser-Black-backed Gull that was growing in the outermost primaries. Rob Hilton aimophila10@hotmail.com Silver Spring, Md. Subject: Short-eared Owl at National Airport From: "Paul P." Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 17:32:22 -0500 Today (Sat, 11/16), Rob Hilton found a SHORT-EARED OWL at National Airport. He first found the bird at about 8:40 am while it was hunting over the grass near the runways. Rob was viewing it from across the river, at Hains Point. I arrived shortly after that, and we waited and watched until about 9:30 am for it to show up again. It hunted low over the fields, at times out of sight because it was below a low ridge. Eventually it invaded the air space of a PEREGINE, and we had a wonderful view as they parried (the falcon clearly had the upper hand). The owl clearly didn't like being below the Peregrine, my guess is that it felt vulnerable in that position, so it flew up high towards the river (we believe it actually entered DC airspace). As it flew past the top of a large, mostly red radar structure we could see that the Peregrine had perched on the structure. The owl eventually turned south and perched briefly on a post at the south end of the airport. A minute later it dropped down to the ground, out of sight. We watched the area a little while longer, but it never showed itself _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================