Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 13:19:55 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Shireen Gonzaga Subject: Re: Leonid 2002 Report MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Elliot said: > Good report. D you remember how many Leonids we had at the peak last year. Sorry, no. I was too busy goofing off and taking photos that didn't turn out. The only count we have came from you, which was about 900/hour. And if I remember correctly, you were goofing off too. > Not as sophisticated a count that time, but Picollo wasn't counting then. True. For someone with a brain the size of a walnut, she did quite admirably. Sadly, we didn't get any birds during the meteor shower. Around 4:30am, Pete Webb and I saw a bat. But bats are not birds so we could not count it. Carolyn Webb tried to make some bird sounds but none of us could identify it. Pete tried to claim seeing a Painted Bunting again but no one believed him. Steve Sanford tried to compare the meteor shower to a hawk watch, but that was too much of a stretch. Pete heard a Carolina Wren after the shower was over but we could not count it (rules are bird sightings must occur in-between meteor sightings). We tried to count a Brazilian Cardinal but it was disqualified because it was a photo on Gail's dining table. After sunrise, we heard White-throated and Fox Sparrows -- they were just lovely! But we could not count them either. Aside from the meteor shower, there were a couple of other exciting moments. We waved to the astronauts in the International Space Station around 5:10am as it zipped past Jupiter. Just before dawn, we investigated a strange object that Gail had seen during previous mornings, something she described as "a weather balloon, but it was a circle with bubbles." Through the scope, we were able to rule out alien visitations, a theory we were leaning towards. Too bad ... it would have explained a lot of things about Gail. Her mystery object turned out to be a lovely crescent- shaped Venus. cheers, shireen -- Shireen Gonzaga Baltimore whimbrel@comcast.net ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================