Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 08:08:32 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: rick Subject: Re: Harford Today Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Matt Haffner wrote: > Conowingo had >about 40 Laughing Gulls and Tydings had over 300. Is this a high count? It is a very high count for recent years. I can't remember having more than a 100 Laughing Gulls in the county in many years. The decline of fall Laughing Gulls in the Upper Bay has been dramatic in the past fifteen years. I can remember twenty years ago seeing as many as 5,000 in September and October at Back River in Baltimore County, numbers that just don't occur any longer. The change happened at the same time that Laugher virtually disappeared as a breeding bird in Maryland (see the Brreding Bird Atlas for details). Back in the dys when thousands showed up at Back River we found a Franklin's Gull or two there almost every year. The big movement up the Bay siggests that it is a good time to be on the lookout for other species that wander north in the fall, including Sandwich and Gull-billed Terns and Brown Pelican Rick. Dear Editor: You have asked me to cut three lines from a five thousand word article. I have performed the necessary butchery. Here is the bleeding corpse. - Henry James Rick Blom rblom@blazie.com 4318 Cowan Place Belcamp, Maryland 21017 (410)575-6086 Editor: BWD Skimmer (www.birdwatchersdigest.com) ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================