Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 06:37:19 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Bonnie Ott Subject: Eurasian Kestrel MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=Windows-1252 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Working in a retail birding store I get a constant stream of ID questions from novice birders. I have found the biggest hindrance to correct ID is an old or poorly done field guide. A good current field guide to eastern birds should help eliminate "out of range" birds and help narrow down the pool of species to choose from when working out an ID. American and Eurasian Kestrels would easily confuse anyone. A reliable guide of eastern birds would rule out Eurasian so an observer could then compare the kestrel, Merlin and peregrine against the falcon sighted. A cute story related to me was a gentleman that reported a flock of tree swallows. Now, a flock of tree swallows is not unusual in itself- however these birds were eating millet on the ground. It was also January! After further discussion it seem the book the gentleman had was an old bird book with only 100 or so birds. It did not show a junco but did show tree swallow. He carefully looked through the book and the closest bird pictured to what he saw was a tree swallow.( An incomplete book is just as bad as an "over-complete" book.) Bonnie Ott Howard County Field Trip Chair Ellicott City, MD bonnie1163@comcast.net ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================