Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 13:15:07 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Elise Kreiss Subject: Pleasant Morning at Ft. McHenry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit My husband and I had a very pleasant Sunday morning at Ft. McHenry, even without Pipits, Snow Buntings or Goshawks. Overdressed in winter coats and caps, we made a circuit from the water near the parking lots around to the maintenance yard. Ring-billed gulls padded around looking for handouts; Greater Black-backed gulls could be seen across the water, and a couple flew overhead, calling. A lone Fish Crow topped a pier, cawing and "uh-uh"ing hoarsely. Bufflehead and Lesser Scaup floated around past and out of sight. Approaching the maintenance yard, against the shore in front of us were twenty dozing Canvasbacks and a similar number of closer than close Wigeons. We saw also some distant Ruddy Ducks, a Pied-billed Grebe, a Sharp-shinned Hawk, and a Kingfisher next to the birdy area kept locked when Jim Peters is not conducting a walk. If there had been a window, our noses would have been pressed against it. . . Elise Kreiss Baltimore ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================