Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2002 05:45:25 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Robert Ringler Subject: Re: BC Chickadee & waterfowl, Loch Raven MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Stan, With no invasion of Black-capped Chickadees this year it's tough to pick out an out-of-range bird. We suspect that occasionally a Black-cap will stray into Carolina Chickadee country but we don't have any hard evidence of this. You need the bird in the hand to be sure. The possibility of hybrids also exists. Carolinas in the northern part of their range may approach Black-caps in characteristics. All of this is just a cautionary note. The bottom line is you are on your own for the identification. We have not had a major Black-capped Chickadee irruption into Maryland for 19 years. Prior to that there was one every decade at irregular intervals. In other years either there was no movement of Black-caps or the invasion stopped before it got to Maryland or a few trickled into the state near the Pennsylvania line. There is no evidence that Black-caps in the southern part of the range move at all, though there may be some down-slope movement in the mountains. All the banding evidence indicates that Black-cap invasions come from eastern Canada. If anyone else can shed some light on the subject I would be pleased to hear other comments. Bob Ringler ----- Original Message ----- From: Stan Arnold To: Sent: Saturday, December 21, 2002 9:21 PM Subject: [MDOSPREY] BC Chickadee & waterfowl, Loch Raven > Hi Folks, > > I took advantage of the nice weather today to avoid the holiday > shoppers, and try to fill in some gaps in my Baltimore County > waterfowl list at Loch Raven Reservoir. Most of my time was spent at > the Skeet Club, off of Dulaney Valley Rd. The most interesting find > came as I was leaving there, and I heard the two-noted song of what > sure sounded like BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE. I spished, and scanned the > large flocks of White-throated Sparrows, and within a minute I was > viewing a chickadee with not only a significant amount of white edging > to the secondaries, but also a lot of white in the greater coverts. > The pinkish buff of the flanks appeared brighter than on the typical > Carolina Chickadee. All in all, I thought this > was a darn good candidate for a Black-cap. ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================