Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 17:41:04 +0000 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: jim brighton Subject: upper shore birding Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed After a spectacular day birding with Hans H. in Dorchester Co. I decided to try my luck up in the northern shore. I was not disapointed. I tried to look at all the Horned Lark flocks I came across (I'm getting tired of looking at Larks!!!) and was rewarded with Longspurs on (1) Sparks Rd, (3) Ells Down Rd, (1) Rt. 229 @ Jacobs Creek, (1) Bloomington Rd, (1) Clarke Rd, (2) Rt 313 on the west side of Rt.301. Also at the 313 flock one of the longspurs was noticebly paler and lacked chestnut on the wings. A car came by and disturbed the flock while I was checking out the finer points of Chestnut-collared Longspurs in Sibley. Never got to see the tail or see him fly. Anybody in the area should keep an eye out for this bird. Also in this flock was a single snow bunting. In the Millington wildlife mang. area I had nice feeding flocks with Brown Thrashers, Hermit Thrushes, White-crowned Sp., Fox Sp., and many Carolina Wrens. On Rt. 229 in the gulch where Jacobs Creek winds across I had a sparrow flock which included Am. Tree Sparrow and Vesper Sp. Common Mergansers were very prolific with 8 on Turner Creek, 15 on the Sassafras River, 10 on Still Pond Creek, and 84 on the Chester River. This was by far the most common waterfowl of the day. Although mostly everything but the Chester River was still frozen over. In the Chestertown Sewage ponds were Lssr. Scaup and on the river there was a flock of 15 Canvasback. On the ponds at Rt 213 and 301 there were 3 Redheads, 5 Tundra Swans, 3 Am. Wigeon, and 60 (approx.) Ring-neck Ducks. Seeing this group of waterfowl was a nice way to end the day. Jim Brighton jdbrighton3@hotmail.com Trappe, Md. _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================