A morning trip to 2 of the counties` reliable shore bird spots with Sean McCandless and my husband Harry provided some nice sightings. By far the most unexpected find at Court House Point was BOBOLINKS( 5 ) in a bizarre moulting plummage that left us silent with mouths gaping as we strove to ID these strange looking things. They were nothing like their handsome spring selves!! The mud flats are looking great here, and gave us all three peeps, spotted ( 2 )& pectoral sandpipers ( 5 ), both yellowlegs, little blue herons ( 15 ) , great egrets, green herons. We also encountered singing blue grosbeaks ( 3 ) along the way, and a baltimore oriole attacking a crow. Gunthers Pond list was quite similar, but Sean got his Semipalm plovers here ( 5 ). The lone male ruddy duck seems to have become a permanent resident. There were app. 30 short billed dowitchers also. Of the peeps, semipalms were most numerous in both locations, then least, and only the occasional western. Pectoral sp ( 2 ), spotted sp ( 1 ). By the way, if anyone has reliable methods for sorting out short/long billed dowitchers, I`d love to hear them. Leslie Fisher Cecil County