> More bizarre was an imm HORNED LARK in adjacent K'worth Park, on the new
> gravel service road to the recently graded area veering off before the
> playing fields. One wonders where this bird came from. With so many
> visits by birders to this site, it seems a breeding pair could hardly
> have escaped notice. So then, where did he grow up? If, after all, at
> the park, thanks are due to the Park Service, Nat Cap E division, for
> their more bird-friendly management in recent years.
>
> Fred Fallon
> Bowie

Fred and all,
    This must be the day for odd Horned Lark Sightings. There is a farm that
sells corn over on Leister's Church Road here in N. Carroll County. As we
were driving into the place to pick up a half dozen ears, we saw a HORNED
LARK sitting right next to the drive. They aren't very common in this part
of Carroll even in winter when they tend to flock up in western parts of the
county.

As a follow up to my post about being "Chosen by Phoebes", Jim Wilson sent
me something that he found that referenced the Ted Williams article I
mentioned. I have edited it down a bit but here is some pertinent stuff :

"... Phoebes are well known and well studied, but not particularly well
described in the behavioural sense. After two years in the field, I started
digging deeper and deeper
into the more historical records of phoebe behaviour and ended up with many
pre-1950's pages of naturalist's accounts of phoebe behaviour. All were
flowery, many were anthropomorphic and a few, in light of modern DNA
technology, were even wrong. However, most managed to capture the 'Zen' of
phoebe behaviour, and, reading them in the dead of Canadian winter, they
managed to make me feel the amazement I had felt while I was watching
phoebes in the field.

One of my favourites is called "To be Chosen by Phoebes", by Ted Williams, a
rather modern one from ca. 1991. He described the honour of having a phoebe
build a nest on his lakeside cottage as reassurance that he hadn't so badly
destroyed his environment. I often wondered if I should have handed out
copies to the cottagers, who when they heard I studied phoebes, launched
into tales of swarming nest mites, piles of bird doo-doo and demanded to
know if I had found a way of preventing them from nesting on cottages."

The author is Kevin Conrad, who apparently lives now in the U.K.

Jerry Tarbell
Carroll County