Sunday @ O.C. Jetty

Eugene Aaron (eaaron1@juno.com)
Tue, 24 Mar 1998 22:37:43 EST


Hello and thanks to Modospreyers and esp. Norm Saunders who have made
this possible.
								
	Sunday I actually got to taste the fruits of subscribing to
modosprey.  After hearing about the good stuff at Ocean City, esp. the
harlequin ducks, we finally made it to the Jetty where we saw a guy with
a scope to whom we immediately gravitated, along with another birder. 
Turns out the other birders were modospreyers! -- Elliott and Nancy
Kirshbaum and Bill Schreitz -- who helped me find four life birds within
a half an hour:  3 white-winged scoters, 5 red-throated loons, gobs of
purple sandpipers, and, yes, a gorgeous flock (dozen) of harlequin ducks!
 That, together with the surf scoter I saw on the Choptank the day before
brought the life count to five, not bad for someone who's been birding
for 12 years already.

An interesting aside:  While I was birding the West O.C. Pond, I talked
with a Dutchman who is a volunteer at Blackwater NWR.  As I told him I
had been looking for the smew in  Cambridge the day before, he said he
very seriously doubted that it was a smew that had been spotted.  He said
that he had seen smews in Europe and that they were much smaller and more
delicate than anything that had been described on the Choptank.  He
thinks it's probably an oldsquaw with a tail missing or something.
Any ideas?  I did see an oldsquaw-looking duck with not much tail there
through the rain and wind Sat. (and I do this for
FUN?)				
				Cheers,	Edna Aaron
					Alexandria, VA
					(703) 768-5562		

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