On Tuesday around dusk, I parked at the end of Sycamore Landing road and went to view the Potomace for a few minutes with a friend is just starting to get interested in birding.  Of course, when we got  there was nothing happening, and my friend wanted to go, but I told him to wait for a few minutes.  Within 10 minutes we had:
 
2  great egrets, 3 great blues and a green heron fly in and land on the opposite side of the river; a lone kingfisher buzzed by us; 3 double crested commorants fly low down the river, 2 female wood ducks land about 30 yards from us, an osprey appeared and plunged and caught a big fish and perched on a tree to eat its catch, hundred or so crows went overhead to their roost, and a barred owl started calling.
 
My friend seemed pretty impressed with the show.
 
Matt Von Hendy (Rockville)