Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 22:54:40 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Rick Sussman Subject: Montgomery Short-eared Owl MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, This hardly seems as exciting as Razorbills in OC, but today Gail MacKiernan, Barry Cooper and I got a real treat as were were given a driving tour of the Montgomery County landfill by the "landfill-lord" in his aging Ford Bronco. We got quite close to what appeared to be a male (pale male) SHORT-EARED OWL, getting terrific views of it in flight and on the ground. At one point it was "harried" by an immature harrier, who came swooping out of the sky and seemed to attack the owl as it sat on the ground. Lots of harriers, mostly immatures/females but one nice adult male too. Earlier I walked around the Blue Mash trail at the back of the landfill, I got great looks at a sitting N. Harrier which had just caught a rat and was eating it near the back gate, and saw at least 4 Red-tailed Hawks, and a Sharp-shinned Hawk, along with 2 male towhees, a Fox Sparrow and some other woodland birds. Later, before Barry and Gail arrived I had an adult Cooper's Hawk barrel toward me and across Rt. 108. Also on the landfill grounds was an American Kestrel perched in a small tree. P.S. I was one of the 2 Montgomery County birders who met up with Kurt Schwartz at Oland Rd. this morning looking for the lappies, the other being Tom Marko. The guy from Ohio was Joe Sedransk. 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 ======================================================================= =========================================================================