Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 12:34:52 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Chris Starling Subject: Re: Chasing Red-necks in Maryland, March 2nd, 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Jim Wrote: "Hans Holbrook and I started the day in his kitchen drinking tea and trying to decide the best way to spend the day bird wise. We decided to go after as many Red-neck Grebes as possibe in as many counties as possible." Greetings: I too Decided to spend this week chasing Red-neckd Grebes. However, I limited my hunt to the 5 rivers of Cecil County. I began at Perry Point on the Susquehanna River at 8AM on Monday, March 3. I was unable to locate any of the 5 or so that I had seen the day before. However a few miles up river I was able to find 3 of them at Port Deposit. I travled west and land birded the Colora/Rising Sun Area and ended up on Elk Neck I was able to locate 68 species. Highlights included light-morph Northern Rough-legged Hawk in Rising Sun, 4 Hermit Thrushes, 4 Horned Larks, Hairy Woodpecker, Red-shouldered Hawk, Bald Eagle, and American Tree Sparrow on Elk Neck, Barred Owl and Fox Sparrow on Hances Point. I ended the day at Charlestown scanning 5000-10000 Common Mergs for rarities. I located 2 Red-breasted Mergs and a few Scaup, Ring-neckeds, Widgeon, and 3 more Red-necked Grebes! Day two of the Grebe Hunt began at my in-laws were I helped rescue an ill Red-Shoulldered Hawk from thier yard. The bird was taken to Tristate Bird Rescue in Newark, Delaware (20 minutes away). They said they have had a lot of RSHA coming in lately with lead poisoning... After spying Brown Thrasher in Fair Hill I continued south across the C&D canal in search of grebe. nothing too exciting was noted until I got to Stemmer's Run Boat Launch in Southern Cecil County on the lower Elk River. 3 more Red-necked Grebe were located there amoug a raft of scaup, ring-necked, and common mergs. -Again two more Red-breasted mergs were found mixed in. My 48 hour cecil birding trek netted 73 species total including all 6 common woodpeckers, all three mergs, yellow-rumped Warbler, Brown thrasher, Hermit Thrush, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Horned Lark, both vultures, 9 raptor species (NRLH), 9 sparrow species and 16 species of waterfowl. Red-necked Grebe Totals tallied 14 birds counting Sunday's 5. Notable misses were: Tundra Swan, American Goldfinch, Pintail, Shoveler, and Killdeer. Good Birding, Chris Starling christopher.starling@med.va.gov ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================