Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2003 07:51:52 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Rick Sussman Subject: Ednor Rd. Montgomery County MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, I had a chance to stop by Ednor Rd. at Brown's Bridge yesterday late morning to check out the conditions for waders/shorebirds,etc. The water was much lower than I expected, given all the rains recently, and conditions look pretty favorable for attracting both. Though there were only small numbers of Great Blues and a couple of Green Herons, there is a lot of good habitat for waders; lots of small "capture" pools among weedy vegetation and small (now partly submerged) shrubs. The gravel and sand edges are just beginning to be exposed, so shorebirds should be turning up soon too. I saw only a pair of Solitary Sandpipers, however. Got an up-close and personal look at an Ovenbird, sitting right beside the boat ramp in a small eye-level shrub, watching me watching it! I first thought it was a Song Sparrow, since I was so close I saw the streaky breast with my naked eye and the rest of the bird was hidden. A Yellow-billed Cuckoo flew over and into the woods (just where the site guide said! Who wrote that account??), and a male Indigo Bunting expressed its opinion of my presence with loud and vocal chipping, and a male goldfinch sat on the "shore" in the sun. This spot deserves to be watched in the coming weeks for late summer wanderers and immatures of any long-legged wading species, and for shorebirds (though the habitat looks better this year for waders). Rick Sussman Ashton,MD warblerick@aol.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================