Such a nice day to bike/hike today. I went down one of the paved roads restricted to work vehicles then down a trail to Hog Island. Ran into a group of fisheries folks just coming back from tending the fish weir on Muddy Creek. They told me about two brown birds with white tails diving into the marsh. Curious, I checked it out finding nothing to fit the description. Hmmm. They know N. Harrier.

Anyway, when I got to the weir, the tide was WAY out. There were little silver fish about 2-3 inches long being gobbled up by Laughing Gulls. At first there were only a couple dozen LAGUs but they kept materializing out of nowhere until my best guess was 110. I was trying in vain to pull a Franklin's out of the group but it was not to be. Maybe tomorrow? Of course tomorrow the conditions will be different but who knows, maybe a rerun of the stranded fish. The laughers were quite stuffed after a while and flew off to stand in the shallows and preen.
 
Tyler Bell

California, Maryland 



Location: Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD
Observation date: 10/8/09
Number of species: 15

Canada Goose    1
Great Egret    1
Turkey Vulture    3
Laughing Gull    110
Ring-billed Gull    2
Red-bellied Woodpecker    5
Blue Jay    2
Carolina Chickadee    2
Tufted Titmouse    3
White-breasted Nuthatch    3
Carolina Wren    1
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle)    7
Eastern Towhee    1
Chipping Sparrow    17
American Goldfinch    2

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)