July 17, 2008

Thursday morning and still no White Ibis. But,

number 109 showed up as a Marsh Wren.

Noisy little guy. He was hard to miss. He kept jumping around and singing until I paid attention.

(not my photo)

Summer doldrums

In between the spring migration and the fall migration there is a gap when very little goes on in the way of viewing new species
Last week there was a posting for a White Ibis in the county, very rare for our part of Maryland. The location happens to be very near my office near the county line.

Not having seen anything new or even anything old worth posting, I decided that early morning trips to this site might net me a new species to add my 2007 county list as well as my life. Three days of venturing to the site and nothing in the way of a White Ibis.

But I was able to see several Wood Ducks (106) a Blue Grosbeak (107). (pictured is an immature Green Heron. I miss identified as a Least Bittern.

Hummer (105)

Finally I have seen the Ruby-throated Hummingbird that my wife spotted about two weeks ago in the back yard. Better late then never. The photo is from last year . i cannot seem to find the really nice pictures of this fellow and the truth be told, our visiting hummingbird is actually a female.

Other birds I have seen this week

I would like to note that I have seen three very striking birds near my office. A Cattle Egret, a Little Blue Heron and a Glossy Ibis. Here are the pix of all three. They were exciting to come across. I actually saw all three in about an hour on Friday June 13th.

Little Blue Heron - top





Cattle Egret - middle





Glossy Ibis - bottom

A first for Howard County

It has been some time since I last posted. But today I responded to a rare bird alert for a Eurasian Collared Dove (102). This is not a rare bird per say, just in our neck of the woods. So I was up at 5:30 am and off to Lisbon Maryland to meet at a beautiful working farm in western Howard County.

We were very fortunate to find the bird as soon as we stepped out of the car. We then proceeded to wander around for the next hour chasing the the thing to get different views as the EC Dove seem to realize we were staring at it and would move from tree to tree, seeming to say,
" Pleasssssssse, stop staring at me".

After that highlight we went in search of anything thing else we could find. For an early weekday morning with not a lot of time we were very successful. Here is a short list of the most colorful and impressive fowl.

Great Blue Heron, perched in the tree tops, Baltimore Oriole, Kestrel, Eastern Bluebirds, Jays, Goldfinches, Meadow larks (I did not see these, drat), Redheaded Woodpeckers (first for me in HC) (103) Grasshopper Sparrows (heard but not seen another life list first)(104) and of course all the other usual suspects. Also a pair of red foxes working their way along a fence line.

ttfn

New goal .....150

Rose Breasted Grosbeak

I have I lot of catching up to do.
Our feeders netted two addtitions, a Gray Catbird (94) and a beautiful Rose Breasted Grosbeak(95) that stopped for a couple of days while a storm blew through the area. Sadly, he left when the sun came out.

At lake Elkhorn I spied several Baltimore Orioles, males and females (96). Also an male orchard Oriole (97) a Least Sandpiper (98), a Solitary Sandpiper (99), Semipalmated Sand Piper (100) and a Prothonotary Warbler (101) over this past weekend.

FYI Semipalmated is a big word for ----> "Having partial or reduced webbing between the toes, as some wading birds do. "
and Prothonotary means : "a chief clerk or official in certain courts of law." I have no idea why a small little yellow bird would be declared a clerk of the court.

I think I need a new goal. so 150 is next.