Birded here Sunday morning for the first time. Was thinking it might be 
one of the under-birded areas of the county given that I rarely see 
postings from there and eBird reports are few. Highlights were a 
beautiful breeding plumage Yellow Palm Warbler and a Great Horned Owl.

  I was alerted to the presence of the owl by mobbing crows. At first I 
thought they were mobbing a Red-shouldered Hawk, because I saw one 
flying amongst them. Then I noticed two Red-shouldered Hawks, and both 
were calling amongst the crows. I then saw a bird fly into what I 
assumed was a Red-shouldered Hawk nest, and that turned out to be the 
owl, which sat on the nest from that point on. I'm not sure what was 
going on, since it's late in the season for an owl to be incubating 
anything. And if it were incubating I would not have expected it to fly 
away from the nest in the first place. Perhaps it had suddenly decided 
to appropriate the nest from the Red-shouldered Hawks, for some reason 
(GHO's always use other birds nests of course), and that set off the 
mobbing. In any event, very cool to watch all the drama.

Good birding!
Jim Moore
Rockville, Maryland
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