Once again, the Cecil Bird Club will be conducting a hawk watch at
Elk Neck, beginning Saturday, September 2, and continuing through
Thanksgiving weekend, birds and weather permitting. This is
an all-volunteer effort and a most pleasant way to spend a morning.

If you are interested in helping out, please send me an email with
your availability. Some people sign on for one day a week all season;
others can only fill in here and there. Whatever you can do will be fine.
Most people arrive by 8 or 9 and observe until 12 or 1, depending on
the day's flight.

If you are new to birding, this is an excellent way to learn more
about hawk identification; you don't have to be an expert to do this,
and you don't need expensive equipment, just a pair of binoculars.
In fact, many of the birds fly so close you can identify them with
the naked eye, NOT something you can say about most hawk watch sites!

The site is less than a mile's walk from the Elk Neck State Park parking lot.
It's mostly a flat trail, very easy, with ample opportunities to bird on
the way in and out. There are two picnic tables and reasonable cell phone
coverage. There's usually a porta-potty near the lighthouse.

If you'd like to volunteer, or get more information, please send me an email.
Thanks!

p.s. Off the subject, but interesting: my sister, who lives in a 
gigantic suburban
development in a state that is famous for its turnpike and devil (those are
two separate things, by the way), has a hen turkey and a half-dozen poults
visiting her backyard. She tells me that the other day, the mama turkey
flapped up onto the railing of the deck, and perched there, not far from
the goldfinch feeder. Turkeys and thistle seed?

--Pat

Pat Valdata, Elkton, MD | 
"The natural function of the wing is to soar upwards
and carry that which is heavy up to the place where dwells the race of gods.
More than any other thing that pertains to the body
it partakes of the nature of the divine." --Plato