Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 20:15:31 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Bruce and /or Karen Stewart Subject: Re: Blue-Winged Warblers at Croyden Creek MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I was intrigued by the exchange about Blue-wings at Croyden Creek because I have never seen a Blue-Winged warbler and Croyden Creek is a short detour off my route home. So yesterday at 5 PM I was sitting on that lovely back porch at the nature center waiting for the warblers. I watched a flock of chipping sparrows on the grass, titmouse, goldfinch, downy, nuthatch taking their turns at the feeder. I took a careful look at the birds at hand. It occurred to me that I was looking at a small yellow bird with completely yellow underparts, dark wings, no streaking at all on its yellow breast, white wing bars, a black eye spot, and the wings formed a lovely black and white pattern when folded on its back. It was a goldfinch, maybe immature or molting or I don't know what but the black forehead was incompletely black. It was more like an elongated eye patch. It didn't extend behind the eye the way a blue wing eye stripe would but it didn't look like the completely black forehead in the field guide either. I'm not saying the goldfinch is the same bird you saw but check the field guide and imagine the bird with black only on the eye. Could it be? Karen Stewart Chevy Chase MD stewkb@erols.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================