President's Day Weekend on the Eastern Shore
Norm Saunders (osprey@ARI.Net)
Mon, 16 Feb 1998 16:40:47 -0500
Fran and I left home Saturday morning and headed to the Eastern SHore
primarily to work on our lists in Somerset and Wicomico Counties.
Needless to say though, we couldn't resist a quick stop in Ocean City
at the Jetty and at the West Pond.
At the Jetty we saw about a dozen HARLEQUIN DUCKS, 8-10 COMMON EIDER,
good numbers of RED-BREASTED MERGANSER, SURF SCOTER, BRANT, AMERICAN
OYSTERCATCHER, and BONAPARTE'S GULL. RED-THROATED LOONS were in
evidence at the mouth of the inlet in large numbers...at one point I
had counted 18 of them and only a single COMMON LOON. Also there was
a smallish flock of RUDDY TURNSTONES, about 25 birds, accompanied by
2 PURPLE SANDPIPERS and a lone RED KNOT.
Moving to the West Pond we were treated to the usual array of
waterfowl. After scanning the pond for about 20 minutes, just as I
was about to give up, a largish flock of about 30 AMERICAN WIGEON
flew in. Upon scanning the flock we almost immediately picked out a
EURASIAN WIGEON, our 200th species in Worcester County!
On Sunday, 15 February, we first birded the Deal Island area of
Somerset County, where we saw a pair of PEREGRINE FALCONS on the
hacking tower, a lone TRICOLORED HERON in the marsh, and 3 TREE
SWALLOWS hunting over the marsh, our first swallows of 1998.
All told we saw 86 species of birds for the three days, not a bad
weekend!
Cheers,
Norm & Fran
===============
Norm Saunders
Colesville, MD
osprey@ari.net