John Hubbell, my very capable co-leader, and I scouted for the St.
Mary's Listers trip on Friday. The weather was less than stellar and at
most locations we were greeted with silence. The one thing that was
present in numbers that I'm not familiar with in southern Maryland were
shorebirds.

So, Saturday morning we retraced most of our footsteps with Leo Weigant,
Dotty Mumford and Tom Feild (not a typo). We ended up with 107 species.
I included Brown-headed Nuthatch and Ruby-throated Hummingbird which I
saw/heard only but given more time we would have run into behind the
museum (BHNU) and hummer somewhere.

We annexed Flag Ponds to St. Mary's and made a run there to scope out
the Red Knot, Ruddy Turnstone and other shorebirds that were found the
day before on the afternoon field trip. We eventually found a Ruddy
Turnstone in St. Mary's sitting on Shrimpy's dock holding it for her
return. As most of you know, Shrimpy starts wandering in March. We
missed Red Knot and Short-billed Dowitcher in St. Mary's but found
dozens of Semi-palmated Plovers, and Least and Semi-palmated Sandpipers
along Long Neck Rd.

My stab at best birds would have to include heard only Northern Bobwhite
in a field approaching Myrtle Pt. Park and along Long Neck Rd. and
Red-headed Woodpecker in the location that Stan Arnold described in a
recent email. Biggest miss was Louisiana Waterthrush in the Wildlands
section of St. Mary's River State Park. John went back on Sunday and
found one in the usual location to the right of the collapsed drainage
culvert. Weirdest bird was a flyover Horned Lark deep in the forest of
the Wildlands.

Thanks to John, Leo, Dotty and Tom for an excellent day of chasing!

Tyler Bell

California, MD