Hi all,

I birded a few spots around Prince George's County today, I started at
Milltown Landing where the highlights included large numbers of SAVANNAH
SPARROWs, a single AMERICAN TREE SPARROW and a few WHITE-CROWNED SPARROWs.
I worked north stopping at Merkle Wildlife sanctuary which held surprisingly
little, I noticed on the horizon two raptors chasing each other, I was quite
happy to see the aggressor was a juvenile GOLDEN EAGLE with a BALD EAGLE on
the receiving end, they eventually made it pretty much overhead but were
very high which explain the quality of photos I got.  My last stop was Jug
Bay as viewed from Selby's Landing, there were large numbers of gulls
building on the ice on the Anne Arundel side (pretty much in front of Danny
Bystrak's Bucket, who unfortunately wasn't home then) by the time I left I
had located one first-cycle LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL, one first cycle
(Kumlien's) ICELAND GULL, one BONAPARTE's GULL and one third-ish cycle bird
that was probably a LESSER BLACK-BACKED x HERRING GULL hybrid among the mass
of birds.  The interesting gull was noticeably darker mantled, had a
bi-colored bill, and had a tail band closer in pattern to a Lesser
Black-backed.  Unfortunately I can't at the moment retrieve the pictures I
have of the bird off of my point and shoot.  It was also interesting to note
that all of the gulls seemed to be foraging on mussels that they were
plucking from the water then dropping on the ices to break them open.

Photos of the Golden Eagle can be viewed here-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeycerw/

Good Birding!

Mikey Lutmerding
Croom, MD