Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 16:44:10 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Les Roslund Subject: Birds in the snow and an out-foxed fox MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lots of excitement in the new 6-inches of snow around here today. With the ground having been covered since Feb 8th, the ground-feeding birds are having a really hard time. One strategy I have started using is to clear a region beside my driveway, very close to a protective hedge row, and sprinkle seed there. The region is about 2 ft wide and 30 ft long. Immediately after the seeding this noon, I turned to watch, and had very close viewing of 30 Cardinals, five Towhees (4M, 1F), 35 White-throats, 25 Juncoes, two Song Sparrows, five Blue Jays, one Brown Thrasher, one Red-bellied Woodpecker and one House Sparrow. If I stand near this site, the Common Grackles and most of the Red-wings stay away. (I feel like I am on playground duty, keeping the grackles and red-wings from taking everything). As soon as I leave, 400 of the blackbirds come in and drive all the other birds away. I do this playground duty 2 or 3 times each day, giving the gentler birds time to get at least a little bit of undisturbed feeding. This morning around 7:00, beside my porch feeder, a fox was out-foxed by a squirrel. Looking out from a second story window, I saw the squirrel first as it jumped from the porch feeder and raced toward a nearby tree. Seemingly from nowhere, a beautiful Red Fox pounced on the squirrel, and flipped it, and then briefly held it in its jaws. The hold point must not have been useful for a kill, so the fox let go to get a better grab. The squirrel burrowed under the snow, but the fox could easily follow, and soon grabbed the squirrel again. This time the squirrel may have bit the fox, for it was dropped, and in two jumps was onto a tree. End of game. Final score: Fox - 0, and Squirrel - still very much alive. High drama indeed. Les Roslund lroslund@bluecrab.org Talbot County Easton, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================