Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 19:24:50 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Gail Frantz Subject: Ft Mac's Kingbirds Fledge - Under Duress MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This A.M., Jim Peters, Elliot & Nancy Kirschbaum observed the adult Kingbirds attacking a squirrel that was crawling in the tree near the Western/Eastern Kingbird nest. Suddenly, two of the juveniles joined the two adults birds and for the first time, all four flew away from the tree together. Jim, Elliot & Nancy were worried. They thought it was likely that when everything calmed down the squirrel would continue the harassment AND where was the third hatched young that was seen last week? Jim ran to the visitor's center, grabbed a broom, ran back & proceeded to climb the tree. Jim whacked and flailed his way with the broomstick up 20' (maybe 15') to within 6' of the nest. But where was the marauding squirrel? "The squirrel's jumped out of the tree!", called out a Fort Mac ranger from below. Jim returned safely to the ground. At least two of the hybrids are safe. The third hatchling has not been accounted for. There may be some posted pics soon. Gail Frantz Old Hanover Rd Reisterstown, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================