Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2004 20:55:55 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: "Paul P." Subject: Ducks in DC in 5's Comments: cc: Janni Ottavio MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit First of all - thanks to MIKE BOWEN for finding the White-winged Scoters on Friday because that made ROB HILTON & LISA SHANNON go down there on Saturday instead of heading straight to Massachusetts, which enabled them to find the Brown Pelican. So a second round of thanks go to Rob & Lisa for actually finding the pelican and quickly getting the word out. Of course if I didn't have to make Starbucks my first stop of the morning, then perhaps my name could be the one in lights. But that would go against my reputation as a Parasitic Jaeger - always letting others find the good birds and then chasing them (the birds, that is, not the birders). But I digress. Just wanted to report some sightings from the past 2 days. In addition to le grand pelican, Dave Czaplak & I saw an AMERICAN PIPIT at the tip of Hains Point yesterday. We also saw a very dark first winter gull that superficially looked like a Mew, but was probably just a dark Ring-billed. But it spent most of its time way out on the river and was not seen as well as we would have liked. Yesterday afternoon I did a very quick loop around the Tidal Basin and did not see the pelican. This morning (Sun, 3/21) I made another quick trip around the Basin, and again failed to refind the pelican. However, I did see 5 LONG-TAILED DUCKS. On the Potomac there were 5 BUFFLEHEADS and 5 HORNED GREBES (ok, not a duck, but close enough). Then at the Aquatic Garderns I saw 5 TEAL (3 BLUE-WINGED and 2 GREEN-WINGED), 4 HOODED MERGANSERS (they never could count anyway), and somewhere around 5 WOOD DUCKS, AM. BLACK DUCKS, and MALLARDS. Only other birds of note were TREE SWALLOWS (now up to 7 or 8) at KAG and 1 EASTERN MEADOWLARK at Kenilworth Park (found by Rob Hilton the week earlier). And as a footnote, last Saturday (3/13) I heard and then saw 20 TUNDRA SWANS as they flew over the Arb. Always a wonderful sighting. Good birding, Paul Pisano Arlington, VA ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================