Bob Ringler and I covered the Back River Sewage Treatment Plant on the Baltimore Winter Count on Saturday, January 17. Bryan Blazie was with us for 3 1/2 hours. Coverage was from 8:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. We covered 5 miles on foot, none by car. Our totals were: Pied-billed Grebe 4 Great Blue Heron 2 Cormorant sp. 1 Canada Goose 130 Black Duck 2 Mallard 48 American Wigeon 18 Common Merganser 6 Red-breasted Merganser 15 Coopers' Hawk 1 (imm) Sharp-shinned Hawk 1 Red-shouldered Hawk 2 Red-tailed Hawk 4 Bald Eagle 1 (adult) American Kestrel 2 Great Black-backed Gull 10 Herring Gull 21 Ring-billed Gull 440 Bonaparte's Gull 250 Belted Kingfisher 2 Northern Flicker 5 Downy Woodpecker 8 Hairy Woodpecker 1 Red-bellied Woodpecker 1 Rock Dove 90 Mourning Dove 31 American Crow 130 Fish Crow 1 Blue Jay 5 Winter Wren 4 Carolina Wren 18 Golden-crowned Kinglet 3 Ruby-crowned Kinglet 6 Carolina Chickadee 27 Tufted Titmouse 2 Red-breasted Nuthatch 1 American Robin 2 Brown Thrasher 1 Northern Mockingbird 4 European Starling 750 Yellow-rumped Warbler 8 (Myrtle) YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT 1 (male) Brown-headed Cowbird 45 Red-winged Blackbird 160 Eastern Meadowlark 22 Fox Sparrow 4 Swamp Sparrow 11 Song Sparrow 79 White-throated Sparrow 70 Tree Sparrow 7 Dark-eyed Junco 6 Northern Cardinal 28 House Finch 10 American Goldfinch 8 House Sparrow 12 Rick "Everywhere I go I'm asked if the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher." Flannery O'Connor Rick Blom rblom@blazie.com Bel Air, Maryland