>
>
> --Myself:  Red Knots.  We picked up about 30 along Port Mahon
> Road near the
> piers. We found, which I felt was a fair number, at the Mispillion
> Lighthouse area.  However, in talking with one of the
> observers at the old
> restaurant, she told me that the numbers were not as great as
> last year.
> The building is now owned by the State and is to be turned into an
> interpretive center for the Red Knot.  Slaughter Beach was at
> low tide with
> a large number of equally dispersed shorebirds along its
> length but not in
> concentrated groups as we have seen in the past.
> Ben Poscover
> Towson  MD
> 
>
>
> Ben and all,
>     Laura and I just got back from doing the same trip. We
> seemed to get
> everything but the Red Knot. At Port Mahon Road, we had zillions of
> Semi-palmated Sands, Turnstones, lotsa gulls and some
> Sanderlings but no
> Knots. Somebody told us they just had some at the Ted Harvey
> area, so off we
> went. Zip. None. So some women we were talking to from D.C. said that
> Slaughter Beach was a better bet. We scanned the whole area
> and couldn't
> find a Knot.
>     The crabs seem to be increasing again and there were lots
> of birds, but
> I'm starting to really get concerned about the Knots. That
> was one of the
> more common birds at the Horseshoe Crab Show just a few years
> ago. And we
> heard no reports of a lot of them: just small groups - Ben's
> bunch of thirty
> seems to be one of the larger groups.
>     And somehow we made it all the way around Bombay Hook
> without catching
> sight of a Harrier. Is that legal? We can still go back there
> can't we? Hate
> to get on some blacklist for getting Harrier-skunked.
>     Jerry Tarbell
>     Carroll County

My wife and I went to this area on Saturday.  We saw many Red Knots at the
Port Mahan road area and countless hundreds or thousands of them at the
Mispillion light.  We got there near low tide, so there was a small sandbar
visible before the main wall with the rocks.  Many, many, many Knots were on
that sandbar, along with a few Oystercatchers.  At Port Mahon, the knots
were not as plentiful as the others, but they were there, and fairly easy to
pick out.  We also saw a couple Marbled Godwits at the same place, and a
single female Harrier at Bombay Hook.

We were with some experienced birders so I am pretty sure I am not messing
this up like I did the other day at Swan Harbor.... :-)

Monroe Harden
Havre de Grace, MD