Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 18:49:28 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: "Paul P." Subject: Arboretum Trip Report - 1/10/04 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I led a bird walk at the National Arboretum today (Sat, 1/10), and I and 5 intrepid birders enjoyed the bright sun, cold temperatures, and buzz of birds. The trip started at 10am to let thing warm up, and it was already a whopping 12F (up from 8F at 7 am). We finished just before 1pm, and it had gotten up to 20F at that point (based on my car thermometer). The highlight of the trip was the number of PURPLE FINCHES - we estimated 15, which was about as many House Finches as we saw. I've never seen so many Purple Finches in DC before! We finished the trip with the following 34 species: Great Blue Heron - 1 Canada Goose - c.500 Mallard - c.10 Hooded Merganser - 4 Cooper's Hawk - 1 Killdeer - 1 Ring-billed Gull - 10 Herring Gull - 8 Belted Kingfisher - 1 Red-bellied Woodpecker - 2 Yellow-bellied Sapsucker - 4 Downy Woodpecker - 2 Pileated Woodpecker - 1 No. Flicker - 1 Blue Jay - 12 American Crow - 12 Fish Crow - 8 (plus about 80 crow, sp.) Carolina Chickadee - 4 White-breasted Nuthatch - 1 Carolina Wren - 2 Hermit Thrush - 1 Am. Robin - c.300 No. Mockingbird - 3 Starling - c.250 Cedar Waxwing - c.150 ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLER - 1 (seen poorly in the Asian Garden; reported to us by Paul Denario) Eastern Towhee - 2 Song Sparrow - 3 White-throated Sparrow - c.100 Dark-eyed Junco - 35 No. Cardinal - 15 PURPLE FINCH - 15 House Finch - 15 American Goldfinch - 8 Rob Hilton, Craig Tumer & I did a little birding before (at Kenilworth Park) and after (at the Arb), and saw the following additional species: Black-crowned Night-Heron (actually at the Washington Channel) Common Merganser Bald Eagle Red-tailed Hawk Peregrine Great Black-backed Gull Rock Dove Mourning Dove (both of these doves were probably seen during the trip, but I just don't remember) Ruby-crowned Kinglet Gray Catbird Brown Thrasher NASHVILLE WARBLER (continues at the Asian Garden) Field Sparrow Rob & I also saw a Chinese Goose on the Anacostia, definitely an escape. Good birding, Paul Pisano Arlington, VA Cheep AT erols.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================