Dear all,

Jerry Tarbell has sent me his Bird Blitz results for Sugarloaf Mountain and I summarize these below. As a reminder, Bird Blitz is a breeding season survey designed to provide data for reviewing potential Important Bird Areas (see Audubon Maryland-DC website http://www.audubonmddc.org/SciCon_IBAs.html

Jerry did 3 surveys and covered a total of 23 km of trails. The totals, in the table below, show that one at-risk species, Worm-eating Warbler, exceeds the state-level IBA threshold. Other good finds were a Cerulean Warbler and singing Black-throated Greens. Jerry described the understory as heavily deer-browsed which accounts for the absence of understorey-nesting forest-interior dwelling species such as Hooded Warbler and Kentucky Warbler. Sadly this is happening to many of our state's forests.

Primary target species  Total
Wood thrush     53
Cerulean Warbler        1
Worm-eating Warbler     24
Louisiana Waterthrush   4

Secondary target species noted
Hairy Woodpecker
Pileated Woodpecker
Acadian Flycatcher
Common Raven
Yellow-throated Vireo
Red-eyed Vireo
Black-throated Green Warbler
Black-and-White Warbler
Ovenbird
Scarlet Tanager
Eastern Towhee


Many thanks to Jerry for his efforts. Other than these data we have very little quantitative information to evaluate this site as a potential IBA so his data are particularly valuable.

If anyone else has Bird Blitz count data from this or other sites in the state please send it along to me. Any counts of any at-risk species would be useful, even if you were not doing a Bird Blitz (your field trip may have been a Bird Blitz without you realizing it!).

I wish I could be at the MOS conference but I'm heading home to England for 2 weeks this weekend.

All the best,

David Curson, PhD
Director of Bird Conservation,
Audubon MD-DC,
2437 Eastern Avenue,
Baltimore  MD  21224
Tel: (410) 558 2473
E-mail: