Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:56:21 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: "Lovelace, Glen (DelDOT)" Subject: Oak Grove Area update 2/15 Comments: To: DE-Birds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Hello All, I birded the area around Oak Grove (Sussex and Caroline Counties) for a couple hours (in addition to feeder watching) on Sunday morning before the winds got too bad. Some waterfowl where about with 225 Canada Geese and 8 Mallard in the pond on my farm, 193 Tundra Swan on Oak Grove Rd and various strings of Snow Geese flying about. The Snows continue to taunt me as they have been on the ground just outside my home circle from the southwest, around the west and north sides, all they way to almost due east for the past 10 days, but will not land inside of it so that I can search for a Ross. Oh well, keeps me searching. The best waterfowl find was 4 Wood Duck at the stream crossing on Horseshoe Rd. This is a local early date by approx. a month. While watching them, I heard a Pileated Woodpecker call the first of the year here. My other good find was a male Kingfisher at the pond. Kingfish is of less than annual occurrence here and this was the first winter sighting. At the feeder, the redpoll turned up again on Saturday morning between 7-8 AM, but has not been seen since despite much looking on Sunday and Monday mornings. Fox Sparrow and White-Crowned Sparrow continue. This morning as I was leaving for work, the Red-Shouldered hawk flew over, another first of the year for here. It brings the year total to 61 - a new high for January and February with 2 weeks to spare. This is ahead of last year's record pace, but is mainly a function of lingering stuff I found on Jan 1. I expect that to even out during March. Good Birding, Glen Lovelace III Seaford, DE ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================