Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 15:36:05 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Charles Vaughn Subject: Re: Ho Co (Atlas training trip) In-Reply-To: <005701c3384e$c3ccf6a0$9962a3d1@oemcomputer> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Nothing gets 'em going better than a Screech Owl tape played at about 100db. To do this easily, take a hand held cassette recorder and plug into the audio output an external computer speaker. Most computer speakers use 4 AA batteries, so you can really boost the gain. You will likely have to get a stereo to monaural converter for the speaker jack. Most (all?) computer speakers have a stereo jack but the cassette recorders are monaural. To walk any distance with this setup it's convenient to have a jacket with lots of big pockets. An ABA birding vest works great. These birding vest are the best thing going for Atlas field work. One pocket holds a can of insect repellant and a head net (for days in western Somerset Co.) Another pocket gets a small bottle of eyeglass cleaning liquid (used for the binos) and a small bottle of liquid insect repellant. Two other pockets get the audio setup. And the myriad of other pockets get whatever else might be appropriate (field cards and pencil go in my shirt pocket.) The vest has the added advantage that it's thick enough that mosquitoes can't drill through. Now if only I can find such a vest made of Kevlar I can Atlas without fear in any of the posted hunt club areas so prevalent in freshwater swamps of eastern Somerset Co. Incidently, today I confirmed several species with this tape setup. Adults seem to bring young to the noise for training. Yellow-throated Warbler, La. Waterthrush, Pine Warbler, Worm-eating Warbler, Downy Woodpecker, and, of course, chickadees and titmouses were especially accommodating in this regard. PLEASE: Anybody bent out of shape over the suggestion that a Screech Owl tape should be used, RESPOND OFF LIST. If the traffic gets too big I'll add a filter to my email program that dumps these responses into my SPAM box. Charlie > > There was very little singing though. Maybe the brisk north winds got the > > birds thinking about migrating south for fall. It sure had me thinking of > > October! > > I've noticed that a lot of birds seem to be going into their silent > > post-breeding thing. I just remarked this afternoon that I don't think >I've > > heard our local orioles for several days now. Makes atlasing tough. >Anybody > > else getting the same thing? Charles Vaughn 1306 Frederick Avenue Salisbury, MD 21801 410-742-7221 essc@comcast.net ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================