Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 14:17:19 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Rick Sussman Subject: Blue Mash trail MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, I spent a very pleasant morning birding with Rob Gibbs along the Blue Mash nature trail along Zion Rd., Montgomery County. Although nothing really terribly exciting showed up, we did have nice looks at : a pair of E. Bluebirds which have already staked out a box and were actively defending it against starlings (not Chris!), a single Canvasback, 3-4 Redheads, a trio of Green-winged Teal and Hooded Mergs, some Ring-necked ducks, a pair of A. Wigeons, a single Bufflehead, a pair of Red-tailed Hawks in the deeper woods (staking out a nesting territory perhaps. Whose atlas block?), lots of towhees calling (no singing yet), a flyover Killdeer (my 1st of the year), and a smattering of other resident birds. After Rob left, I went over to Rachel Carson park where it was fairly quiet. There was a pair of Brown Creepers right by where I parked along the road, but a long walk in the woods failed to turn up anything very interesting except a very bold beaver, which came out of its lodge on the small pond, and swam back and forth in front of me, eyeing me and slapping its tail, getting closer and closer with each pass. The other interesting sighting was a flying Eastern Comma butterfly (my earliest sighting) in the woods. It gave me excellent views at very close range with my new binoculars, which got a good workout. They are magnificent! We ran into a nice group from Baltimore County, Steve Sanford, the MacDonald's and another lady (sorry I forgot your name). Hope you guys had some good birds and enjoyed the beautiful weather. Way too nice to be indoors.... 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 ======================================================================= =========================================================================