Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 18:11:19 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: "George M. Jett" Subject: Dec. 7 Waterfowl Count. in Charles County, MD Comments: To: SMAS@yahoogroups.com Comments: cc: Miliff@aol.com MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Folks Today Allen Browne, and I did part of the Fairfax Audubon Society Waterfowl Count in Charles County. We birded four location: We birded from about 9 AM to 4 PM. The locations: 1. Pomonkey Creek, 2. Marshall Hall, 3 Mattawoman Natural Environmental Area, and 4. Mattawoman Creek Road. The cold weather turned most of the open water to ice so the numbers were lower than I expected. As the day proceeded, it got warmer, and more birds were found. Areas 3 and 4 should be checked more often for waterfowl. The Eurasian Wigeon was at location 3 until at least Monday. The following birds species and numbers for the four locations. Pied-billed Grebe: 3 at 2 Horned Grebe: 2 at 2 Canada Goose: Heard at 1, 75 at 2, 170 at 3, and 500 at 4 Tundra Swan: 40 at 2, 10 at 3 Gadwall: 18 at 3, 6 at 4 American Wigeon: 12 at 3, 1 at 4 American Black Duck: 10 at 1, 2 at 2, 325 at 3, and 350 at 4 Mallard: 10 at 2, 250 at 3, and 500 at 4 Northern Shoveler: 2 at 3, and 70 at 4 Northern Pintail: 40 at 3, and 410 at 4 Green-winged Teal: 143 at 4 Ring-necked Duck: 2 at 4 Greater Scaup: 2 at 2 (Sometimes called Black Heads) Lesser Scaup: 50 at 2 Bufflehead: 35 at 2, 5 at 4 Hooded Mergansers: 3 at 2, 50 at 3, and 114 at 4 Common Mergansers: All females, 4 at 4 Ruddy Duck: 5 at 2, 1 at 3, and 7 at 4. Shorebirds: All at 4. 5 Greater Yellowlegs, 4 Common Snipe, 2 Killdeer Other birds of note were: Brown Creeper at 3. Kingfisher at 2 and 3. Great Blue Heron: 15 at 3, and lots more at 4. Northern Harrier at 4. Red Shouldered Hawk at 4 Red-tailed Hawk at 4 We also along the way picked up seven woodpecker species. We had Yellow-bellied Sapsucker at 3 and Red-headed WP at Bumpy Oak Wetlands. The latter was a bird of the year. Interesting back pattern. Bald Eagles were at all four locations. Enjoy the birds. George ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================