Cecil Sightings

Harry Fisher (fish8553@dpnet.net)
Sun, 09 Aug 1998 23:36:50 -0400


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