Yesterday I went to the County Landfill with Fred Shaffer, to search for rails in an area closed to the public.  We went to an area that I surveyed during the recent MD Atlas and I am very familiar with it, but I found no rails there during the Atlas.  Last week I found a King Rail in a wetland there, and was curious to see if it was a migrant so I went back this week to check again and found presumably the same bird.  Fred and I checked for King, Virginia and Sora rails there from ~ 6-7 AM but had no luck, then left the wetland wondering, since no response is certainly not indicative of no rails.  We left to look for other species elsewhere, shorebirds in particular.

Last weekend a Stilt Sandpiper showed up at the pond by the "recycle pad"; it was found and reported by Bill Hubick.  This area is accessible to the public - as long as you park at back end of the the dumpster area there, and remain in the vicinity - and - stay out of the way of any business there.  The STSA was in sharp breeding plumage, and still present on Monday when I stopped to drop off trash, but we did not see it yesterday.  We saw one large shorebird there that we did not id, but it flew off somewhere unknown.   We decided to return to the first wetland mentioned above, to look for the STSA - but had no luck.  However, as we were leaving it, the KIRA called!  It made a few call notes (kek kek kek) and then cut loose with the typical loud grunt call.  When we positioned ourselves to try and look for it, we saw some movement and a bird and rabbit flushed each other by surprise, but our view was obscured and we did not id the bird.  It was still in there, so I tried a call, but got no response.

We had 77 species, with the KIRA being the highlight but also a calling Bobwhite (my FOY), and a lone hen turkey were nice surprises.  We had Killdeer, Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, Solitary Sandpiper, Spotted Sandpiper, Semipalmated Sandpiper, and Least Sandpiper.  I would like to return in a couple weeks to see if it may be breeding there.

Cheers-
Jeff Shenot
Croom MD