I just read the account(s) of the Eastern shore excursions yesterday, 
and "wish I had their luck"!  I looked hard here (Jug Bay area) yesterday 
while doing the Patuxent River water bird count (7:30-10:30am) organized 
by Chris Swarth at the Jug Bay Wetland Sanctuary.  Unfortunately I found 
no Ruffs(!), but it was an interesting morning for waterfowl; gulls and 
shorebirds were scarce.  There is not good winter variety here for the 
latter since we have mostly mud flats at low tide only, and in high tide 
the areas that may harbor shorebirds are difficult to view.  There are 
normally numerous killdeer and W. Snipe but I saw none yesterday.  On 
Wednesday I saw 44 killdeer and 17 snipe in one area, but found nothing 
else among them.  Uncommon birds observed today included wood ducks (16) 
and Am. wigeons (9) (FOY here for me), Am Kestrel, and a lone Red-B 
merganser (hen).

At home yesterday I was looking for something other than common grackle, 
starling or red-winged blackbirds in the flocks around the house, hoping 
to see something else for a new yard bird.  Every year toward the middle 
to end of winter they aggragate around here, and I refer to these mobs as 
the local hoodlums.  They can empty a feeder station in about 30 minutes!

There are rusty's here daily in the scrub-shrub wetland behind the house, 
but they tend to avoid the company of blackbirds (unless they are at rest 
in a tree and a few RWBL's happen to join them).

I had 2 interesting observations but nothing specific to report.  At one 
point I saw a lone blackbird walking about 20 feet from the house at the 
fringe of the feeder area, and there were a few birds around but no flocks 
of blackbirds.  I immediately knew it was not a RWBL by the way it was 
walking.  Although I have not seen a Brewer's yet in MD, I am familiar 
with them from out west, and in some areas their as tame as pigeons in an 
urban park.  They have a distinct walk, and I recognized this immediately 
when I saw the bird yesterday.

However, when I got on it with binoculars, I was surprised to find out it 
was a rusty.  I thought about it, and although I see them daily, I don't 
think I have ever seen one on the ground.  They are always in trees or 
shrubs.  To me, their walk looks just like a Brewer's.  This one was 
apparently foraging on the ground, although I didn't see it pick up 
anything to eat.  It didn't stay for long; I watched it about 45 seconds 
then it flew away when some "hoodlums" came in to bully about.  These guys 
remind me of the hoppers from the movie "A Bug's Life"!

That was the first sighting of interest - I learned something new about a 
bird that I see all the time, so that was pretty fun!  The second was 
truly mundane, but a good counting exercise.  We had a big flock of COGRs 
in the front yard for about 10-12 minutes.  They got up twice and came 
back down to feed, but the third time they got up they did not come back 
down.  While they were down, as well as in the air, I looked hard for 
something other than a COGR, but found nothing.  I tried to count, which 
was difficult since they moved a lot, but feel comfortable estimating the 
flock at 1200.  I think there was about 80 percent males (purely a guess; 
I saw about 4 to 5 males per female).  The one odd bird I saw was a male 
with half white and half normal pigment.  Its back, rump and a few of its 
wing primaries were pure white.  The rest of the plumge was normal.  Last 
year I remember seeing a similar starling that was about 3/4 white.

Cheers-

Jeff Shenot
Croom MD