Gemma Radko and I took a day trip down to Point Lookout State Park on 
Saturday, March 3. Highlights were an eared grebe close and brief on 
the left, off the first causeway in the park, near at least a half 
dozen horned grebes. A white-winged scoter was probably on view at 
the point from the side of the parking lot opposite the restrooms. 
The mid-day shimmer left some doubts of the distant, somewhat 
abstract bird but apparently this dark brown (not blackish) fowl had 
a pale orange bill and white patch beneath the eye and lacked the 
splashy white hindneck of a surf.

Other highlights included three pine warblers, two ospreys (one 
chased by an adult bald eagle off the point), three brown pelicans 
flying by, and six brown-headed nuthatches near the Civil War prison 
site in the park. Other expected species included at least a dozen 
common loons, good numbers of black and surf scoters, 24 or so each 
of red-breasted mergansers and greater scaup. Dozen or more 
Bonaparte's gulls in company of six to ten Forster's terns were also 
on view in the park, off the jetties. Nearby roadside birds included 
one brown thrasher and one field sparrow and a northern harrier, as 
well as one flock of a dozen eastern meadowlarks.

Howard Youth

Bethesda, MD