Yesterday I went for a drive over to Queen Anne County with my son, to look at migrating waterfowl plus whatever else we could find.  We had a very enjoyable afternoon despite the overcast light and late drizzle.  Waterfowl numbers were low overall, but variety was still very good (obviously many are heading north now).  It was his first time on the eastern shore (off the highway), and we went on many small backroads; and his summary was "dad, there's a lot of farms here"!

We had nice views of most birds, but best of all was the shrike.  I went to the site at Round Top (Chino Farm area) where the shrike has been overwintering, and it was my third try.  I had previously been once in Jan and once in Feb, both times spending 1-2 hours looking with no success.

After an hour of diligent searching around the area and surrounding roads yesterday, I suspected it was going to be a repeat (miss), and after an hour and 30 minutes I decided to give up.  We were driving away on Round Top, when I saw a very distant bird flying toward us from the north, and it landed about 200 yards away at the top of a tree along the private entrance lane to Chino Farm.  As I reached for my bins I remarked that the bird had the right look, and it was worth a look.  Success!!

We pulled over and got the scope out, and although it was ~ 200 yards away, the light was good enough to provide a great view of the bird; it was at 4:00pm.  I asked him to describe what he saw (so I knew if he was seeing it well), and he called out the bird's field marks, then looked up at me with a big grin on his face.  We watched it for about 7-8 more minutes until it flew north, back in the direction it came from.  The mythical shrike made an appearance, and was clearly the highlight of our day!  To see it with him was as good as it gets for me.

P.S.  We also looked for a Short-eared Owl at Pemberton (Rt 309) for about 40 minutes, but dipped.  It may have been too early (~ 4:30-5:15pm), and with inclement weather, hard to guess if they were around.  There was a steady light rain and conditions were not good for viewing, and getting worse as it began to rain harder.  I carefully scanned the surrounding area for a roosting owl but found none.

Cheers!
Jeff Shenot
Croom Md