Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 21:11:03 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Arlene Ripley Subject: Calvert County sightings Comments: To: md-smas@yahoogroups.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed 3/12/03 Decided to take advantage of nice weather and check the condition of one of my bluebird trails. This trail is located at the Huntingtown Natural Resources Management Area (aka hunting area) at the end of Smoky Road. A few boxes shot up but none destroyed this year. That good news was offset by the huge bullet hole that tore through two sides of a Barn Owl box. I get so discouraged when I find stuff like this. I can only hope an owl was not inside. Another unpleasant discovery, but this one due to Mother Nature, was a bluebird box with three dead female bluebirds that must have been using it for roosting during the cold, snowy weather. My guess is that they froze, starved or were smothered by other birds on top of them. As I walked through the fallow fields I came upon two silent, tail bobbing AMERICAN PIPITS and thought to myself that this was a rather small "flock" but I didn't see any more birds. A few more yards and about a hundreds pipits suddenly burst into the sky, vocalizing, swirling around and then landing farther away. I thought I might as well check the river and, as is par for the course these days, I found four RED-NECKED GREBES mid-river in the Patuxent. This is a bit north of the fishing pier at Kings Landing Park. As I prepared to leave, I looked up and saw the most beautiful Red Bat hunting insects at 2:30 in the afternoon. Its orange-red body literally glowed as it swooped and swerved over my head. On the home front, a male Pine Warbler returned to his old haunts at the window feeder last week and today he was joined by a female. He is still extremely tame. Arlene Ripley Calvert County, MD aripley@nestbox.com http://nestbox.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================