Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2003 19:30:40 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Rick Sussman Subject: Sugarloaf CBC Sector 1 highlights Comments: To: voice@audubonnaturalist.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hi all, Well the weather forecasters were off by only 1/2 a day this time. Snow began along the C&O Canal near Dickerson about 7:45 this morning and really never quit. This put a damper on the birding, making some of the back roads in western Montgomery County rather treacherous. Still, my partner Clive Harris and I managed to find 43 species in about 4 1/2 hours of birding. Our best finds were a single male Northern Harrier flying over at 7:15 and heading west across the Potomac into VA., a single flyover Common Loon a short time later, heading east, fair numbers of Winter Wrens, Ruby and Golden-crowned Kinglets (5 each), 4 Wild Turkey (though a second-hand sighting from some joggers who passed us twice), a single Savannah Sparrow, a small flock of about 20 Horned Larks, fair numbers of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, and a pair of Yellow-rumped Warblers. A pair of Great Horned Owls were calling from the parking area by the Mouth of Monocacy boat ramp parking lot when I arrived there at 7 AM. Big misses were a lack of any vultures, no Sharpie or Cooper's Hawk, low numbers of most sparrows, and hardly any waterfowl. Also very low numbers of E. Bluebirds. The snow had much to do with the lack of these species, I'm sure, as visibility was bad by noon. All in all though a very pleasant walk along the canal in lightly falling snow. Rick Sussman Ashton,MD warblerick@aol.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================