Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 18:27:14 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Jim Wilson Subject: ABA Maryland Harriers at the Cape May World Series of Birding MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The ABA Maryland Harriers Youth Team did a great job at Saturday's WSB at Cape May. Jim Wilson, Zach Baer, Ben Thiesse, and Will Covington identified 154 species in this 24 hour event. They were especially proud that almost all of the key birds that they had found during 2 days of scouting were still there on the Big Day, (including a red-necked grebe .... they really were everywhere this year.) They found 22 species of Warblers on the Big Day, 24 including scouting, when they had Nashville and Canada. The birding conditions were "unusual." While Maryland was warm and partly cloudy, Cape May was cool and foggy. The fog stayed around until around 1:00 pm. Our total was higher than more than half the adult teams. The boys did all of their birding in Cape May County, but the designated driver still managed to drive 252 miles. Special thanks to the MOS members who made donations or bought blue bird boxes. We sold close to 60 bluebird houses. The kids are already talking about going back next year. The WSB is not just expert birders spending weeks scouting and driving the length of New Jersey on the day of the competition. (Although the Nikon team did just that and totaled 230 birds to win and set a new record for the event.) This year they had their first "Big Sit" Team and that will be a category for next years event. There were 13 youth teams entered this year including 2 from Vermont. They even had a tiny tots event where the really young walked around a park searching for pictures of birds. And, next year's competition will be held the week after Mother's Day weekend. Good birding! Jim Wilson Queenstonwn, MD. ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================