Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 14:53:39 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Sherry Peruzzi Subject: Common Moorhen (Howard Co.) Comments: cc: Suzanne Probst MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT The Common Moorhen continues at Font Hill Park off Centennial Lane in Ellicott City (Howard County). Sue Probst and I went up there this afternoon to look for it, and we got there at just the right moment -- the bird was wading in the shallows at the edge of the small island in the middle of the pond, right out in the open and very easy to spot. We got great views of it as it waded around, swam for a bit, and then walked onto the island and foraged at the edge, right behind the cattails. We then walked around the rest of this small but lovely wetland park, and by the time we came back, about 45 minutes later, the Moorhen wasn't visible. Since others have reported difficulty spotting it, we assumed it was there on the island hidden in the vegetation. We congratulated ourselves having the great luck to just walk right in and see it. We didn't see anything else of note, since it was early afternoon and most of the birds were resting in the shade somewhere (presumably on little hammocks strung between twigs, with little tiny glasses of cold beer in their wings). Sherry Peruzzi Howard County bookworms =at= comcast =dot= net (address munged to foil spammers) ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================