Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 19:12:15 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Rob Hilton Subject: Reddish Egret Ocean City June 23 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Hi, Less than an hour ago I turned on my cell phone to call Lisa and found that John Hubbell had left me a message around noon. (Sorry!) He had seen a Reddish Egret shortly before he called me, while he was at Hoopers, facing Skimmer Island. He described it as doing the "crazy dance/running" feeding behavior and watched it fly off to the west side of the bay, where he watched it for a while before it disappeared from view. He read off from his notes: bigger than a Snowy Egret it was standing next to, bigger and paler than a Little Blue Heron it flew next to, no white below (as on a Tricolored Heron). Gray body, reddish head and neck, crown and front of head shaggy, with pink legs, a pink base and a dark tip on the bill. I believe I have all this right, after listening to the message twice. Reddish Egret is not in the Yellow Book and as far as I am aware there are no accepted records for the state. I hope to head over there tomorrow to look for it. (I normally have no internet access away from my office.) An adult dark-morph bird was seen Friday on the Route 175 causeway to Chincoteague Island, Virginia, on Friday (morning) but was not seen on Saturday at about the same tide level. Rob Hilton aimophila10@hotmail.com Silver Spring _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================