Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 20:31:54 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Steve Huy Subject: Re: Hummingbirds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 12/09/03 20:24:33 Eastern Standard Time, gail@MDSG.UMD.EDU writes: > However, I feel it is a bit unfair to imply that folks in the 70s and > 80s did not know to look for hummers or any other vagrant out of range > or out of season -- I know personally that they did! I'm sure things were different back in those days before birds developed flight. ;-) > > The moral of the story is to keep your eyes and your (birding) mind > open. I recall Barry telling me the story of when, about 20 years ago, > he went to the Pt. Mahon impoundment in Delaware. He met a fairly > well-known birder leaving the impoundment's edge, and that fellow told > Barry that the "best bird" out there were some Black Terns. Not quite. > The best bird was a > *White-winged* Black Tern (the first reported in USA for many years) which > the fellow had not recognized -- maybe because he was not expecting such a > rarity and his birding mind "saw" what he *had* expected, just some black > terns. > Reminds me of a time at Braddock Bay, NY on spring migration. There was lots of excitement over an unidentified bird over the lake. Lots of argument over it. After a while I asked, "is it near the black vulture?" as that was the only thing I could find out there. "How do you know its a black vulture" was the response. Being a terrible birder i had not thought that might be unusual up there (although I hear that BVs are quite regular now) Steve H. Middletown, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================