Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 19:35:26 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Keith Eric Costley Subject: Ft McHenry Big Day (05-04) MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Birders, On Sunday, May 4th, Jim Peters assembled the Star-spangled Birders for a Big Day at Ft McHenry. We started at 5 a.m. and counted fifty-two species during the eleven hour event. Our "missed list" nearly matched Jim's monitoring list from from the previous week - it was one of those quiet birding days. We expected to see the same individuals throughout the day; so we counted the number of species each hour, then added any new species to the list for the day. Our second hour was our strongest with 32 species. 1st hr.: 12 2nd hr.: 32 3rd hr.: 30 4th hr.: 24 5th hr.: 21 6th hr.: 18 7th hr.: 10 8th hr.: 13 9th hr.: 10 10th hr.: 12 11th hr.: 15 The COMMON YELLOWTHROAT, BLACKPOLL, and MYRTLE were the only warblers found. Sparrows included: Song, White-throated, Swamp, Field, and Chipping. We enjoyed close encounters with dueling Tree Swallows, fishing Least Terns, and Orchard Orioles in four distinct plumages (an adult male, a female, a first spring male, and a young male that had chestnut and yellow feathers with a dark crown and bib, orange eyebrow). A pair of Osprey have build a built a nest on the wetland platform, and were busy all morning mating, and fishing. Species counted: Common Loon, Double-crested Cormorant, Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, Black-crowned Night-Heron, Black Vulture, Turkey Vulture, Canada Goose, Mallard, Osprey, Bald Eagle, Red-shouldered Hawk, American Kestrel, Killdeer, Greater Yellowlegs, Spotted Sandpiper, Ring-billed Gull, Herring Gull, Great Black-backed Gull, Least Tern, Rock Dove, Mourning Dove, Chimney Swift, Northern Flicker, Eastern Kingbird, Blue Jay, American Crow, Fish Crow, Tree Swallow, Northern Rough-winged Swallow, Barn Swallow, Marsh Wren, American Robin, Gray Catbird, Northern Mockingbird, European Starling, YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER, BLACKPOLL WARBLER, COMMON YELLOWTHROAT, Chipping Sparrow, Field Sparrow, Song Sparrow, Swamp Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Red-winged Blackbird, Common Grackle, Brown-headed Cowbird, Orchard Oriole, House Finch, American Goldfinch, House Sparrow Star-spangled Birders: Jim Peters, Wendy Taparanskas, E. Wayne Gordon, and Keith blah blah blah-ley Keith Eric Costley oriolekec1@comcast.net Randallstown, Baltimore County, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================