My goodness, it certainly got quiet on here all of a sudden. I hope that means people are out watching birds! Yesterday morning I wandered around Brookside Gardens and other parts of Wheaton Regional Park. I was dismayed that one of my favorite locations for wintering sapsuckers and migrant thrushes had been leveled and replaced with a large building and even larger parking lot. The paving of Eastern Montgomery County rolls on...... Nonetheless, I did have my first YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER of the Fall season, a RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH calling loudly in the parking lot of the Nature Center, mass quantities of RUBY-CROWNED KINGLETS all over the park, ditto YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLERS, and a very pleasant mixed flock of sparrows, including at least 60 CHIPPING SPARROWS, 2 or 3 FIELD SPARROWS, about a dozen or so SONG SPARROWS, 20 WHITE-THROATED SPARROWS, and a half-dozen or so DARK-EYED JUNCOS. I hope the rest of you had equally or more productive days! Cheers, Norm =============== Norm Saunders Colesville, MD osprey@ari.net