Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 20:04:07 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Jim Wilson Subject: Re: Cape May Autumn Weekend MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I have attended the spring and fall weekends at Cape May within the past 2 years, although I did miss last year's fall week-end and this year's spring. I have nothing but good things to say about both, especially the fall week-end. The organization of events is always top-notch and the propel doing the work are the best in the business. The detailed schedule is not yet on-line, but I can say that you will have many choices of birding tours, featured lectures in the afternoons, and good food and company at the evening's dinners. They do not publish who will be leading the birding tours, but speaking from personal experience, the leaders are all great. The number of people in the tours that I went on were typically between 20 to 30 people, which may seem like a large number, but the leaders handle it well. I have been on tours with Pete Dunne, Louise Zemaitis, Mike O'Brien, Pat Sutton, etc. If you stay at the Grand Hotel with the week-end package, I do not believe that you will be disappointed. The Cape May Bird Observatory is managed by a wonderful group of people who enjoy their jobs and enjoy birding and birders, a tough combination to beat. And the live bird show at the convention center is exceptional. The Eagle Owl that was there 2 years ago was alone worth the price of admission. (Please note: the "convention center" at Cape May is not much bigger than a high school gym, but it is packed with optics vendors, birding tour groups, etc. You can go from vendor to vendor and compare optics from Nikon, Swarovski, Swift, Bausch and Lomb, Zeiss, Leica etc, etc) I cannot speak for what the bird migration will bring at the end of October, but Cape May is always special for birds. 'nuff said. Jim Wilson Queenstown, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================