Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2003 21:21:26 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: "George M. Jett" Subject: Red-necked Grebe in Charles + OC intel Area Comments: To: SMAS Comments: cc: Miliff@aol.com MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Folks On Saturday morning, March 8, I continued my search for Red-necked Grebe in Charles County. At Myrtle Grove I could only find 5 Hooded Mergansers. I did have a nice collection of about 12 American Tree Sparrows. At about 10 AM, at the Mattawoman Environmental Area (MEA) at the end of Mattawoman Creek Road, I found my first Red-necked Grebe of this invasion year. There was a nice collection of Common (200-300), Red-breasted Mergansers (~20) Mergansers, and a pair of Osprey at MEA, as well. Later in the day (about 4 PM) when Gwen returned from the MOS board meeting, we continued our quest. The single bird at MEA was missing, but we did find about 6 Red-necked Grebe at Smallwood State Park. Our next stop was the Port Tobacco Marina. We had three Red-necked Grebe and one Red-throated Loon, a nice bonus bird. Today we went over to Ocean City area looking for the Little Gull found by Dave Czplack. We did not find the LIGU, but did have a nice collection of Red-throated and Common Loon, one Red-necked Grebe, five Black Scoters, and a single first year Great Cormorant in the inlet channel and just outside. The other target birds (Common Eider and Razorbill) were not to be found either. We also had 32 Brant, a few Purple Sandpipers, and maybe 6 Ruddy Turnstones. From Hooper's we found our first Laughing Gull of the season, and about 8 American Oystercatchers. West Ocean City Pond highlights were one American Wigeon, 4 Redhead Ducks, a dozen or so Northern Shovelers, several pairs of Gadwall, maybe 300 hundred Canvasback, two Ringneck Duck, 30+ Ruddy Duck, 10 Black Duck, and some Mallards. We were unsuccessful finding the Clay-colored Sparrow on Evans Rd. We did locate a nice collection of White-crowned Sparrow at the north bend in the road by 9235 I think. Report your birds. George ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================