Hi Folks,

No internet service at home again, so am writing during lunch break at work.

Yesterday the winds were pretty wicked, so I decided to go birding at the most open miserable place possible, and that turned out to be Sandy Point State Park.  After all, the winds just might blow in something unusual.  Once there I scanned through the 500 gulls, and could only come up with the big four.  After 90 minutes of birding in the wind, I had a total tally of seven species!  When I returned to my car preparing to leave I noticed some geese out in the water north of the point.  A quick scan caused me to go hmmmm, black heads; little white patches on the necks...it took me a few thousand microseconds to realize that I was looking at four BRANTs.  I ran the scope to water's edge and began digiscoping, while intermittantly getting some phone calls out to some people that might be able to get there before sunset.  This was a county bird for me as I missed the one that Dave Perry found in Crofton along Rte 3 eight or nine years ago.

I stayed at Sandy Point till Dan Haas arrived, and he took a few dozen photos, and then we jumped into our cars to try to make it to Sands Road Park in the southern part of the county to look for Hans Holbrook's Vesper Sparrow before sunset.  We were there for almost 45 minutes, but found none of the choice sparrows found by Hans.  We did, however, find 7 or 8 SAVANNAH SPARROWs and 4 E. MEADOWLARKs.  These are both pretty scarce birds in AA Co.

Stan Arnold
Ferndale (AA Co.)