Hello all, This is a call for anyone who can to do a little birding over the next few days to seek out hurricane-blown vagrants in Maryland and surrounding areas. There is still a lot to be learned about the effects of hurricanes on birds, especially in Maryland. Your effort may produce valuable information on how birds respond to the storm, how to predict the bird loads of future storms, and where to concentrate our coverage in the state in the future. Maryland has yet to "hit it big" a la Bridge-Tunnel, Kerr Reservoir, or Cape May (all of which had large numbers of high quality storm birds in 1996 - see following emails). Remember that we still need the following for the state list, all of which have precedence for hurricane blown vagrancy to the Northeast: White-tailed and Red-billed tropicbird, Brown Booby, or Herald and Fea's Petrels. We also have pitifully few records for Magnificent Frigatebird (7), Black-capped Petrel (3), Band-rumped Storm-Petrel (1), White-faced Storm-Petrel (2), Sabine's Gull (2 well documented), Arctic Tern (3 well documented), and a number of other likely waifs. Almost any tubenose or seabird in Bay or inland would likely be a county first. Three emails will follow that may be of use to anyone planning on seeking storm birds. ** The first discusses strategy and recommends some locations that might be good to check, even if only briefly. ** The second addresses the most likely species to be seen, with comments on 1) previous records in MD and elsewhere 2) expected behavior during the storm 3) identification ** The third reviews past storms in MD and on the East Coast. I, unfortunately, am still working on an oil platform 67 mi off the LA coast (studying the trans-Gulf migration with LSU -- has been slow recently) and will not be able to do any hurricane chasing. Jim Stasz has written to say he will cover Hooper's Island. If you can spare any time (I know it is a work day for those who can't run off at a moments's notice!), please consider the emails below, consider your goals in seeking hurricane birds: are you out for state birds, county birds, or simply to better understand the effect of hurricanes on birds and specifically, on birds in Maryland. I hope that a number of you will decide the latter is a primary goal and pick some of the more poorly covered locations, rather than getting a bottleneck of people at Sandy Point or Point Lookout (a couple of the obvious choices). Birding with others is always more fun, but consider that your contribution will be much greater if you bird any of the multitudes of sits that will likely go unchecked otherwise. Note that if any of you are not subscribed to Hurricane Net, you can do so by emailing jwcoffey@tricon.net and asking him to add you to the list. He edits the list himself (your posts go to him and he posts if he thinks they are appropriate) which is active ONLY during a major hurricane effecting the East and Gulf coasts. There should be a number of postings from the next few days which will give you an idea of what others are seeing and what our chances are. I will try to forward postings of interest to MDOsprey for those that do not subscribe. Finally, PLEASE use common sense as this storm could still be dangerous and will CERTAINLY cause dangerous driving. Do not take unnecessary risks, don't stay go to Assateague or Ocean City of flooding or truly dangerous conditions are likely, and do not drive through the really bad stuff. Beware of fallen trees on roadways. Watch out for tornadoes which are always a possibility in these storms. To my knowledge there a has not yet been any injuries or fatalities due to birding induced insanity in these storms, but I know a number of birders (e.g., Ned Brinkley in Fran 1996) have been scared senseless. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE BE CAREFUL!!! That said, check out my other three posts and I hope they are of use. Remember that even if there is not a high rarity load (I _think_ there will be), whatever you observe will be of interest. Take good notes. And please, post your observations as soon as you can (or better yet, call a friend who is stuck at work and see if s/he can post for you! Perhaps someone will volunteer to be a switchboard for hurricane observations... Good luck and safe birding! Marshall Iliff miliff@aol.com (currently 100 mi off LA)