Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 12:55:10 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Sarah Anderson Subject: Re: Variant coot at Hughes Hollow MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I saw what was probably the same bird on Saturday morning and I took photos of it. I haven't downloaded them from the camera yet so I don't know if they have the detail you are looking for, but I will take a look at them tonight to see how they turned out. If they seem to have enough detail who should I send them too? Sarah Cabin John, MD BirdNerd3@aol.com www.pbase.com/sarahbee In a message dated 3/17/2004 9:18:08 AM Eastern Standard Time, JBOUGHTON@IMF.ORG writes: Dave and Phil - Thanks for your very helpful inputs. FYI, the white outer tail feathers were quite visible on this bird. The lighting conditions were excellent, and I had a clear view through a Kowa scope with a 20-60x eyepiece. Jim Boughton -----Original Message----- From: David Mozurkewich [mailto:mozurk@BELLATLANTIC.NET] Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2004 7:51 AM To: MDOSPREY@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM Subject: Re: [MDOSPREY] Variant coot at Hughes Hollow On Mon, 15 Mar 2004, Phil Davis wrote: > From an ornithological standpoint, this sighting should probably be > documented, if possible. > > I would suggest that anyone who sees this bird try to determine the > scoring category for the shield type of this bird. Photos and sketches > would be especially welcome. > At 17:12 03/14/2004 -0500, Jim Boughton wrote: > >On Saturday 3/13 at Hughes Hollow, around 4:30 pm, there was a coot > >with no red facial marking and a quite large white facial shield. It > >looked very much like the "variant" coot illustrated in the Sibley > >and NG guides. Jim, I'm glad there is interest in both reporting and documenting unusual plumages of our commoner species. We can all learn a lot from this type of discussion. For example, I would love to hear some opinions on which subspecies of Canada Goose occur in Maryland. And their relative abundance. Phil, I am, however, a little surprised that these variant coots are considered to be so unusual in Maryland. Although I am not one for keeping good records, my impression is that these variant coots are not all that uncommon. I have seen them both at Lake Artemesia and Piscataway over the last couple of years. I would not be surprised if they are annual in Prince George's County but I do not look carefully at enough coots to make that claim with any real confidence. Also, this comment is based on seeing the enlarged, white shield; I find assessing the lack of red to be a real challenge, if not impossible, under most field conditions. In fact, even on a normal American Coot, the knob is such a dark, dull red that I would wager most readers of Jim's message went running off to their field guides exclaiming "what red?" Let me conclude with a suggestion for anyone needing the lure of a rare species as motivation for looking through a large flock of coots: Eurasian Coot, in a family known for vagrancy, is a species that is probably underreported in North America. They have the extended, white shield and lack both the red knob and white outer tail feathers typical of American Coot. After that, you're on your own. Dave David Mozurkewich Seabrook, PG MD USA mozurk @ bellAtlantic.net ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================