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Perryville today and presentation on waterbirds and wind power in Annapolis

From:

Patricia Valdata

Reply-To:

Patricia Valdata

Date:

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:56:33 -0400

I was able to spend a few minutes at Perryville today, where the water is
still high in Mill Creek. Saw a small group of coots, and some ducks far out
in Furnace Bay-maybe scaup. You would need a scope to see them clearly. Not
much else was happening, although a saw my first-of-season Killdeer, and my
first butterfly. Usually I see Mourning Cloaks, but this one was a small
brown and orange job that flitted past too quickly to get in binoculars. I
also saw those little bright blue flowers that are the first wildflowers ot
bloom. I don't know what they are-they aren't pale like bluets.

 

The Bald Eagles were active on their nest across Mill Creek. Both adults
were moving their heads up and down-whether they were rebuilding their nest
or feeding chicks I don't know. When do eagles this far up the bay lay their
eggs?

 

I am also forwarding below an announcement about an upcoming talk that may
be of interest.

 

It's spring!

Pat


> Title: Waterbirds and Offshore Wind Power Development - Interactions,
> Studies, and Mitigations
> 
> Where: 49 West Coffeehouse at 49 West Street, Annapolis, Maryland.
> Information and directions to the 49 West Coffeehouse can be found at:
>  ; or call:  410-626-9796 to make
> reservations, (suggested, given the overflowing attendance).
> 
> Date and Time:  6:30 P.M., Thursday March 25, 2010.
> 
> Speaker's Biography:  Doug Forsell has studied migratory birds for
> over 35 years.  He received his Masters Degree from California State
> University - Humboldt in Wildlife Management, where he studied the
> predatory efficiency and energetics of belted kingfishers.  He has
> worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for 33 years.  He spent
> ten years in Alaska primarily studying the at sea distribution and
> abundance of marine birds, but he also worked on their food habits,
> colony surveys, high seas gillnet mortality of birds, and recovery
> efforts of the endangered Aleutian Canada goose.  He spent four years
> as the refuge manager of five remote tropical Pacific islands where he
> censused and studied breeding biology of 12 species of tropical
> seabirds and monitored wintering green sea turtles. He also monitored
> contaminants in reef biota and sought to mitigate the effects of 1,300
> people sharing one square mile of land with 250,000 seabirds.
> 
> Since moving to the Chesapeake Bay area in 1990, he has worked to
> implement the Waterfowl Management Plan of the Chesapeake Bay Program.
> His major activities have involved interpretation of waterfowl
> population trends, surveys of waterbirds in offshore waters, assessing
> the mortality of waterbirds in anchored gillnets, modeling diving duck
> distributions, and identifying and mitigating threats to birds and
> their habitats.  Most recently, he has worked on aerial winter
> waterbird surveys and seawatches to better define the numbers and
> movements of coastal birds to mitigate the effects of sand mining,
> entanglement in fishing gear, and wind power development.

> The Annapolis Cafe Scientifique takes place at the 49 West Coffeehouse
> at 49 West Street, Annapolis, Maryland.  Information and directions to
> the 49 West Coffeehouse can be found at: ;
> or call:  410-626-9796 to make reservations, (suggested, given the
> overflowing attendance).
> 
> http://www.cafescientifique.org/annapolis.htm