Late this afternoon on the way to dinner at PAX NAS we drove along the bay by 
Goose Creek & saw the most amazing number of Horned grebes. Before dinner I 
counted over 200, after dinner there were at least 500 in about 5 large rafts! 
A few were in breeding plumage & others were coming into it. They were 
accompanied by 3 beautiful Common loons. I had no idea grebes migrated together in 
such groups.   

Goose creek was host to about a dozen female RB Mergansers which must have 
been following a school fish as they barely came up for air before they went 
back under water. Not a male in the lot. The mergs had 5 Bonaparte's gulls 
helping them fish.

At our house on St. Jerome's Creek, there are more & more Buffleheads every 
day. Today there were 3 Ruddy ducks, one female & 2 males, one of which was in 
lovely plumage. Our regular Ruddies have been gone for over a month so it was 
a treat to see these guys. A couple of Lesser scaup were out there as was a 
single female Golden-eye.

Sigrid Stiles
Dameron, St. Mary's Co., MD
7 April


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