Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 16:26:13 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Gail Mackiernan Subject: Lots of Lappies and more in Frederick Co. today Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi all -- Barry and I went out to Lilypons Gardens in mid-morning, and afterwards did the roads and fields in the area. We had a good time, lots of nice birds: Lilypons: They have set up a number of feeders both around the main house and also, out behind the plastic greenhouses. The young man behind the counter directed us to he latter site where there also a couple of chairs nicely placed for viewing the feeders. In short order we saw: 12 Tree Sparrows, 2 White-crowned Sparrows (both adults) plus good numbers of White-throated & Song Sparrows, a single Towhee, numbers of Goldfinches and other expected birds attracted to the seed and the sheltered location. (Lilypons is now selling bird seed and feeders so we bought some seed; its always good to show them some economic benefit for being so birder-friendly.) Fields: The major area was the well-manured field on the north side of Oland Rd. There were about 300+ Horned Larks feeding within feet of our car (some on the road itself) and we counted at least 30+ Lapland Longspurs and a single Snow Bunting with them. And that's only being able to view about half the flock well as the rest stayed below the brow of the hill away from the road. A peregrine (as Rob Hilton reported) is hunting the field and we saw it capture, carry off, and start to feed on a small victim, probably a Lark. A number of the Lappies were males showing a lot of color on the nape and breast, really brilliant views in perfect light. Also present were 2-3 Meadowlarks. We drove around a lot of other roads looking for birds and found a few Larks along Cap Stine (also on manure) but they seemed to trying to stay away from the large (and increasing) flock of crows at the same site. This is probably where Rob and Lisa had their Buntings, and it is worth regular checking. Besides the Peregrine, other raptors included about a half-dozen Red-tails, Sharp-shinned, Cooper's, Red-shouldered Hawks plus a distant small hurtling falcon that probably was a Merlin. Gail Mackiernan Silver Spring, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================