Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 17:31:06 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Elise Kreiss Subject: Tidy Nuthatch MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Highlights of a morning walk today in Leakin Park with my husband included watching nest building - or nest appropriation - by a female Nuthatch, who was cleaning out a hollow in a tree with a narrow, slit opening, making soft "ip" noises much of the time. A male was close by, ipping, or yanking, and in a 20 minute period joined her once at the site. As Tom Beal described in a 3/9 post, she did not drop the old nesting material, but placed bits of in nearby trees, stuffing it under loose bark, and shoving a lot of it into a small knothole nearby. However, the nest hole contained several whole brown leaves that looked just like those lining the woodland floor; and these she simply dropped from the entrance. As often, we had two Red-shouldered hawks and numerous Blue Jays near the model railway station. The dump had numerous Song Sparrows. From Winans Meadows looking over the Gwynns Falls, two Red-tailed Hawks soared, one with talons lowered. The 2nd bird made a brief lunging motion towards the first, then all went on as before until they appeared to fly off in different directions. We had a single Bluebird, a single Kildeer, a small flock (maybe 9 birds) of mixed male and female Cowbirds, a slightly larger flock of female Red-wing Blackbirds; periodic Grackles overhead, plenty of Robbins, but not overpowering, lots of Juncos, including two flocks of twenty or more birds each, and 5 - 6 Fox Sparrows (three sites). One was chasing another so quickly and smoothly around a tree trunk, I initially took it for a rodent. Some Mockers, Flickers, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, Downies, Titmice, Cardinals, White-throated Sparrows, Morning Doves, Chickadees, House and Goldfinch; the House Finches very noisy in the tall grass by Dead Run heading down the hill towards Winans Meadow; very few Crows, a few Gulls, and the usual Starlings. We sighed as we looked around and saw all the nests we somehow walked by and missed in this, our Atlas block, last year. Elise Kreiss Baltimore City ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================