Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 21:21:49 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Stan Arnold Subject: BC Chickadee & waterfowl, Loch Raven MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Folks, I took advantage of the nice weather today to avoid the holiday shoppers, and try to fill in some gaps in my Baltimore County waterfowl list at Loch Raven Reservoir. Most of my time was spent at the Skeet Club, off of Dulaney Valley Rd. The most interesting find came as I was leaving there, and I heard the two-noted song of what sure sounded like BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE. I spished, and scanned the large flocks of White-throated Sparrows, and within a minute I was viewing a chickadee with not only a significant amount of white edging to the secondaries, but also a lot of white in the greater coverts. The pinkish buff of the flanks appeared brighter than on the typical Carolina Chickadee. All in all, I thought this was a darn good candidate for a Black-cap. As for waterfowl, from the big bridge over the reservoir along Dulaney Valley Rd. were roughly 50 COMMON MERGANSERs and 50 HOODED MERGANSERs. At the Skeet Club, I took the fire trail back, and studied the reservoir from two widely spaced vantage points. The tally, with crude estimates of numbers: PIED-BILLED GREBE-1 CANADA GOOSE-plenty GADWALL--6 AM. WIGEON--300 AM. BLACK DUCK--1 MALLARD--50 REDHEAD--32 (and I'm sure there were more "around the bend" where I couldn't see) RING-NECKED DUCK--150 BUFFLEHEAD--1 HOODED MERGANSER--40 also: COOPER'S HAWK--1 RED-TAILED HAWK--1 Sapsuckers seem to be plentiful in this area. On my way home, I stopped at the big Halethorpe pond, at the end of Halethorpe Farms Rd. in SW Balt. Co. The only waterfowl there were five Gadwall and a dozen Hooded Mergs. Stan Arnold Glen Burnie dy.dx@verizon.net (new address) ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================