Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 13:26:53 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Paul Woodward Subject: McKee-Beshers WMA 1-18-03 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Took my weekly Hunting Quarter Rd. count this morning. Despite the cold (5 degrees when I started) not a bad count. Many of the birds were sitting in the open trying to get enough sun to warm up ( I wasn't so lucky). Fairly normal count for this winter- 27 species. Good numbers of fruiteaters- 10 Eastern Bluebirds, 7 Hermit Thrushes, 29 Cedar Waxwings, 28 Myrtle Warblers- and Winter Wrens (9). Again no winter finches. Best bird for me was the Ruby-crowned Kinglet which I hadn't recorded since the first count in mid-December. On Tuesday 1-14 I had 4 ruby-crowns on my towpath count. Came back through the fields looking for sparrows in the food strips. Mostly white-throats but I had 12 Am. Tree Sparrows in a broomsedge field and 3 swamps. My original plan was to look for Red-headed Woodpeckers after the count in the area between the impoundments and Sycamore Landing Road, but there was too much shooting in the area I was going to walk through so I had to be satisfied in walking around the field west of the impoundments, which wasn't a bad decision. Found my first blackbird flock of the winter-300 red-wings- and first Eastern Towhee. Also heard 3 Red-headed Woodpeckers. The red-heads at the impoundments seem to have disappeared. Paul Woodward Fairfax City, VA 22032 grackling@worldnet.att.net ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================