I got out birding locally for the first time in over a month, on Friday for a short while before the (unexpected) rain, at Lilypons with Cyndie Loeper and then for about 2 hrs early on Sunday at Hughes Hollow.

Lilypons Friday was shaping up to be a nice sparrow morning, with a Lincoln's showing well early on along the main road overlooking Lilypons - pleasing to find one since it is getting a little late for them.  In the space of an hour we had several White-crowned, single Savannah and Chipping, and many Swamp and Song.  Two Bald Eagles perched together were nice.  Not so nice was the rain for which I was totally unprepared with no waterproof gear at all, bringing an early end to the birding.

Hughes was very birdy first thing yesterday morning.  There were around 30 Rusty Blackbirds feeding in one of the fields in a mixed flock with Robins and other blackbirds. There were many Purple Finch overhead - I counted around 40 but of course this could represent a smaller number of birds being counted over; also one or two American Pipits overhead. The fields had a lot of sparrows - but I could only find 3 species (Swamp, Song and White-throated) plus juncos.  Many other common and expected birds, put up occasionally by a roving Sharp-shinned Hawk. In one of its passes it did a bounding, woodpecker-type flight, confusing for me at first but perhaps less so for the intended prey since it didn't catch anything on that pass.

Regards

Clive Harris
Cabin John, MD




__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com