Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:59:58 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Gail Mackiernan Subject: A nice day out Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi -- Barry and I went out this morning into Northwest Branch Park, upstream of Rt. 29, in Montgomery Co. We were hoping to get a jump on this year's Breeding Bird Atlas and find the suspected nesting Yellow-crowned Night Herons (which were a possible last year but we weren't able to confirm as we got started late). Well, no Night Herons but we did have a nice selection of birds for a beautiful late March day: 30 species including a pair of Wood Ducks, 1 Brown Creeper, 3 Golden-crowned Kinglets, 4 Phoebes, 6 species of woodpecker including a lovely male Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, as well as a Pileated excavating a nest hole (only "probable" for woodpeckers, however), 3 Fox Sparrows, 5-6 male Towhees, adult Red-tailed Hawk, a few Yellow-rumped Warblers, and also, a very good number of Goldfinches, Chickadees and Titmice which are rather thin on the ground around our house this spring. Didn't see any Hermit Thrushes or Winter Wrens, both expected. Also, no Mourning Cloak butterflies which should have been out in this weather (it's a traditionally good area for them) -- I wonder if the severe snow this winter has caused a die-off of overwintering adults. Has anyone else seen Mourning Cloaks this spring? Cheers, Gail Mackiernan Colesville, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================