Sorry for the late post, but after I got home from birding yesterday, I didn't have access to the internet due to a variety of reasons.

I went to Havre de Grace and had an excellent time even though nothing tropical made it up this far yesterday.  The shorebird variety and numbers were excellent as were the numbers of Black Terns.  I started with a quick check of the flats at 7am after failing to reach Lapidum due to downed trees.  The flats were the lowest I'd ever seen and had excellent numbers of birds, but I was antsy that a Sooty Tern would be coming down the Susquehanna, so I went over to the Lighthouse.  I was able to hunker down out of the wind behind the lighthouse and watched a few birds flying in the river, mostly Ring-bills and Forster's Terns fighting the wind to head upriver.  I did have singles of Black and Royal Tern flying down river, right past me and head over towards the flats.  It was at that point, I realized that I should have just stayed at the flats.  I drove back over there and over the course of the next 3.5 hours, was joined by Jim Stasz, Mike Burchett, Betsy Bangert, Ed Boyd, and John Hubbell.  High tide was supposedly at 9:30am, but the flats rose continuously while we were there and were gone not long after 10am.  I'm not exactly sure what happened, but I suspect the Susquehanna brought enough water to overcome the strong NW winds that made the flats so extensive in the early morning.

The shorebirds were fantastic, probably the best variety I've ever had in Harford County.  The full list is below, but the highlights:
4 Black-bellied Plover
4 Ruddy Turnstone
6 Red Knot - single flock of presumed juveniles, about the 4th county record and the new high count
3 Sanderling - my personal high count for Harford, my 3 previous records were 1 bird each
2 White-rumped Sandpiper - one flew over my head from somewhere inland before circling and landing on the flats
3 Stilt Sandpiper
4 Short-billed Dowitcher
2 Red-necked Phalarope - 2nd county record and my first for Harford.  First just one seen sitting on the flats, but then it flew a short distance and we realized there were 2.  They either sat perfectly still or were flying in <10 minutes they were on the flats.
30 Black Terns - possibly a county high count, certainly beating my personal best of 14.  

Hope everyone made it through the day okay.  In the afternoon, my rode with my wife on a few equine emergency calls and there were downed trees everywhere including blocking some major roads even at 8pm last night.

Matt Hafner
Forest Hill, MD



############################

To unsubscribe from the MDOSPREY list:
write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]
or click the following link:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=MDOSPREY&A=1