Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 19:48:43 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Marty Cribb Organization: tqci.net Subject: Monday 2/16/04 sightings at Maryland Rock/Beauvue Ponds Comments: To: Southern Maryland Birding MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello All, We took advantage of the final day of the long weekend and made a trip to the ponds off of Md Rt 244 (Medley's Neck Rd) Breton Beach Rd and Abell's Wharf Rd or the area known as Maryland Rock/Beauvue Ponds. For those not familiar with the area it can be located in the ADC St Mary's Co Map Book on Map 15 and is approximately 4 miles south of Leonardtown, Md near Leonardtown Middle and High Schools. Clear skies bright, cold and windy was the weather of the day but it didn't slow the birds down one bit. We had as many as 5 Northern Harriers flying at one time also in mid afternoon a hunting Short-eared Owl which occasionally was mobbed by 6-7 American Crows. All the ponds are now ice free and have good numbers of Canada Goose, Ring-necked Duck, Redhead, American Black Duck, Mallard, Gadwal, American Wigeon, Hooded Merganser, Tundra Swan as well as unfortunately, 6 pairs of Mute Swan. The previously reported White-crowned Sparrows are still around and the count was about 2 dozen with most being sub-adults. One surprise was a blue morph Snow Goose mixed in with a large group of Canadas grazing on the shoreline of one of the ponds. Snow Goose can be hard to find some years in St Mary's Co. Good Birding, Marty Cribb, Callaway, St Mary's Co, Md --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by tqci.net] ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================