Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 13:12:06 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Gail Mackiernan Subject: Little Gulls at Back River 3/25 Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi all-- Barry and I went up to Back River this morning to look for Little Gulls -- this is about the best time for this species here, according to our notes. We were not disappointed! We arrived about 9:45 and almost immediately had one Little Gull on the water with Bonies off Diamond Point Rd. (that is, upstream of the Eastern Ave. bridge). It afforded good looks as it preened; it was an adult in winter plumage. We then went down below the bridge, looking into the river from the shore-side restaurant behind the gas station. There were hundreds of Bonaparte's Gulls on the water and flying about (it was high tide and windless). With them were *four* Little Gulls also flying about, 4 in view together at several points. Many of the small gulls were on the water and at some distance in not very good light, and thus it was hard to be sure if there were not even more Littles about! We estimated at least 1000 Bonies on both sides of the bridge. We then went back above the bridge and found the first bird still on the water so a total of FIVE at least! There were also 4-5 Fox Sparrows (several singing nicely) at the Diamond Pt. Rd. site (a vacant lot with "for sale" sign), plus one Tree Swallow and several Green-winged Teal. Gail Mackiernan and Barry Cooper Silver Spring, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================