My brothers Mike, Tom and I covered the aforementioned area for the PG
Fall Count on Sunday (9/19). We spent most of the morning at Governor
Bridge, where the highlights were:

Red-breasted Nuthatch - calling in the pines next to the parking lot
CONNECTICUT WARBLER - (Tom only)
Nashville Warbler
Least Flycatcher - (Mike only)

By my count this is the 5th incident of Connecticut Warbler at
Governor Bridge this Fall, though there could be more:

09/01: Me
09/09: Mikey Lutmerding
09/10: Me, probably the same individual from the day before
09/19: Tom Ostrowski
09/20: Mikey Lutmerding - likely a different one than the day before,
which was found along the hedge rows on the farm


Continuing with the Fall Count, next we headed to Schoolhouse Pond
where it was fairly quiet except for 215 flyby Laughing gulls and a
single Herring Gull. After Schoolhouse, we birded the Brown Station
Landfill, where we had:

Wood Duck     3
Mallard     18
Blue-winged Teal     7
Green-winged Teal    1
Northern Shoveler     1
Pied-billed Grebe     1
Sora     3     - My first in the county away from the Patuxent.
Killdeer     10
Spotted Sandpiper     1
Solitary Sandpiper     2
Greater Yellowlegs     6
Lesser Yellowlegs     4
Semipalmated Sandpiper     1
Least Sandpiper     30
Pectoral Sandpiper     12

At White Marsh Park in Bowie, we found: 2 Swainson's Thrushes and 1
Bay-breasted Warbler, among the more common warblers. After a few
other small stops, we ended the day at Fran Uhler where we had 1 first
fall female Cape May Warbler.

In other news, while driving down Croom Station Road on Monday (9/20)
I caught a swarm of white waders out of the corner of my eye. After
turning around and finding a safe place to park on the almost
non-existent shoulder, I counted 42 Great Egrets and 9 Great Blue
Herons in the small wetlands in between the road and the railroad
tracks. This beats my second highest count for Great Egret in PG by
34.

Robert Ostrowski
Crofton, MD