Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 09:05:39 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Rick Sussman Subject: DC Christmas Bird Count MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, I was finally able to participate in the DC CBC after many years of its coinciding with the Triadelphia CBC. This year they were a week apart, so I joined with David Farner and the ANS youth "Ospreys" for a day of birding along a section of the canal. It was fairly quiet birding except for the fact that we were joined for about 2 hours in the early morning by his honor Mayor Anthony Williams of Washington (and his entourage)! It certainly made for a very noteworthy group as we wend our way down along the river and canal, gathering lots of stares from the locals. I did get a brief chance to actually bird with him (pointing out a Red-bellied Woodpecker) and even a moment to ask a single question of him (How long have you been birding? More than 20 years). He his a good birder, finding a Red-shouldered Hawk in deep woods that I could not locate until it flew. Mostly I stayed in the back of the group, which was too large for proper birding (at least 20 maybe more) for a CBC. Once he left things settled down to a more normal routine, and we had a fine morning of birding with the kids and some of their parents. In the PM hours, our (by now) small group of 5 had what for me was the highlight, an adult Bald Eagle chasing a pair of sub-adults from its territory by the river, followed closely by another adult. We also located what appeared to be an eagle nest almost directly across the river from the Little Falls of the Potomac(as seen from the large pumping station along Canal Rd.) It was near the top of a large tree right along the shore on the VA side, above the falls. Does anyone know if there was an active Bald Eagle nest here recently? The pair which we saw chasing the young eagles was not far from this area. Something to keep an eye on in the coming months. Hope everyone has a very happy holiday. Enjoy the weather, and do a bit of birding with one of the many area Christmas Bird Counts... 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 ======================================================================= =========================================================================