Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 10:16:55 +0000 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Norm Saunders Subject: Saturday in Worcester Well, we missed the Dovekie at the inlet yesterday. As Bob Ringler has so often told me, "Timing is everything!" Nonetheless we had a productive day. We started off at the inlet a few hours before the Dovekie showed up where we enjoyed at least two RAZORBILLS and a couple of RED-NECKED GREBES with Sean McCandless and Parke John. Fairly good numbers of NORTHERN GANNETS were just visible in the distant haze, all heading north along with skein after skein of scoters. A subadult male COMMON EIDER dropped into the inlet jast as we were about to leave. Next stop was the Berlin Sewage Ponds, where we hoped to see the white-fronted goose reported by Bob Ringler the prior weekend. That bird wasn't present but we had a nice assortment of 7 species of waterfowl, lots of singing Red-winged Blackbirds, and one adult Bald Eagle harassing gulls over the ponds. Heading down-county along Rt. 113, Fran picked out WILD TURKEY in a field west of the road and just north of Basket Switch Road. Along Basket Switch we found a smallish (~30 birds) flock of Canada Geese. Much to our surprise and pleasure we found a young GREATER WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE among them, probably the same bird reported by Ringler since it had an extensive amount of white on the head. Harmon Landing Road didn't yield any great suprises, but along Cedartown Road we saw a gorgeous female Red Fox sunning at the entrance to her den. At the Worcester County landfill we turned up 2 adult LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULLS but noe of the white gulls we had hoped for. Later in the afternoon we ran into Zach Baer, Kevin Graff, and Dave Weesner at the inlet, where we learned that the Dovekie had been a 15-minute wonder an hour or so after we left the jetty earlier that morning. Such is life. The Razorbills were still continuing to thrill folks, however--a most cooperative alcid species! Zach told us of an adult Iceland Gull he had seen earlier in the day on Skimmer Island but we were unable to relocate it at 4 pm. We continue to host SWAMP SPARROWS and FOX SPARROWS in good nnumbers at our feeders but, for the first weekend since last fall, we failed to see a Brown Creeper here. Signs of spring, everywhere... Oh, for the record, we saw a large flock of Snow Geese in Wicomico County about 2-3 miles north of the Salisbury Bypass on Friday late afternoon. Scanning the flock quickly we located one ROSS'S GOOSE. Enough for now. Good birding, everyone! Norm & Fran Saunders P.S. Looking forward to seeing everyone next Saturday on the Lewes Pelagic--keep your fingers crossed for salubrious conditions! =================================== Norm Saunders Colesville & West Ocean City, MD marshhawk@att.net ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================