Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 18:27:47 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Norm Saunders Subject: Saturday in a Worcester County Yard MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Fran and I came down to our weekend hideaway yesterday with a long list of Spring to-dos. Nonetheless we had a pretty good day just looking at passing birds. We have our first breeding confirmation of the season=97we=92ve been watchin= g a pair of Brown-headed Nuthatches since March 1 and now are convinced they are nesting in a dead conifer along the back of our lot. The pair (separable by the amount of white on their heads) have been working on a hole about 30 feet above ground with differing levels of intensity since we first noted their interest the first day of the month. Today we saw one bird relieving the other at the hole, both birds working hard on the interior of the hole and dumping small pieces of material out of the hole, and finally both birds settling down in the hole at dusk. Unless someone disagrees we feel this constitutes ON confirmation of breeding! Oh, and yes, they are within safe dates. I was out before dawn this morning (you know me, I never sleep) fixing the suet feeder (attacked and somewhat damaged by, I assume, a local raccoon). In a wooded area behind our house and along the marsh, I heard the soft, slow trilling of an Eastern Screech-Owl, a new yard bird for us. When we headed out to do some shopping this morning I saw a largish flock of wading birds along the edge of the marsh abutting Sinepuxent Bay. Since Fran was still getting ready I set up the scope and looked them over. What a surprise! I counted 37 Great Blue Herons, 7 Great Egrets, 3 Snowy Egrets, and one Yellow-crowned Night-Heron. They had dispersed (or flown off in search of a nesting colony site) by the time we returned. Does anyone know of heron colony sites in coastal Worcester County? Later this afternoon I noted a Brown Pelican flying north up Sinepuxent Bay.= One notable absence this weekend is the small group of Swamp Sparrows that have been coming all winter to our feeders. More tomorrow if anything is happening at the jetty! Norm =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D Norm Saunders Colesville & West Ocean City, MD marshhawk@att.net =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D =========================================================================