Hi all,

I've grown tired of being an archival lurker for the last 6 years so
with my inaugural message I want to report a family of Yellow-crowned
Night Herons that has successfully fledged three juveniles, but who
have not dispersed, from their nest on the Johns Hopkins Homewood
Campus in Baltimore. A campus security guard who runs a bike route all
day alerted me to their easily visible nest just a couple of days
after I saw a two juveniles chasing each other (on foot!) around a
nearby parking lot. The nest is very visible, hanging exposed over San
Marino Drive, which divides the campus from Wyman Park (the road's
heavily spotted with "whitewash" under the tree). I believe this is a
different pair from a couple of adults I found in May (and have
habitually seen since) feeding along Jones Falls Trail a few miles to
the southwest.

On the Monk Parakeet nest behind St. Agnes reported about a week ago:
I dipped on these birds, but spent 45 minutes walking the alley and
putting my binoculars on anything the least bit birdy. So I quickly
discovered the exposed obvious nest (which does seem to be populated
by House Sparrows) on the electric pole transformer halfway down the
alley. But there appears to have been a second "parakeet" nest on the
adjacent pole, hidden in the trees, of about the same size and
structure and also built around the transformer. This one may have
been populated by grackles. I would guess this implies the pair has
been around this neighborhood for some time, but keeps getting pushed
out of its nest by invaders.

My problems are two-fold. First, although I've birded in both Chicago
and New Haven, I've never seen a Monk Parakeet (or even a nest) so I'd
really like to pick up this pair. Second, I expected the nests to be
much bigger. Most literature I've read online about nest size reports
even single pair nests to be several feet across. I'm afraid that what
I thought were parakeet nests were just obvious, prominent stick nests
in very "Monk Parakeet-like" locations around power transformers. If
anyone with particular knowledge on Monk Parakeets or anyone who went
to try for these birds could respond to me off list, I'd really like
to know if I've missed the real nest (somehow) along this alley or if
these smaller but parakeet-like nests are it.

-- 
Alex Baish
Ijamsville, MD (home)
Baltimore, MD (work/school)