Greetings,
Following up on the sightings of Common Mergansers on the Potomac River.
Dave Czaplak reported one Common Merganser chick with no adult present on the
Potomac River at Violette's Lock, Montgomery County, MD on 30 May (on
MDOsprey).
He described the size of the bird as being rather small, with no length to
the body. The bird was seen on a stony beach, mid-river, before disappearing
downstream. This seems to fit well with Christie Huffman's 8 June report of
half-grown Common Mergansers with an adult just upstream of Riverbend Park,
Fairfax County (on VA-Bird). This was just a few miles downstream of Czaplak's
sighting.
There are few breeding records for Virginia and Maryland. The Field List of
the Birds of Maryland (The Yellow Book) has no breeding records indicated.
Virginia's Birdlife and Annotated Checklist (The Blue Book) has two records
from
Rockingham County (Mountains and Valley) of an adult with young, from 1953
and 1954, as well as a 1965 record of an adult with young from Dyke Marsh,
Fairfax County (Coastal Plain). In June of 2003, Suzie Leslie and Peggy
Speigel
observed a hen with eight young 4 June and again 21 June on the Little River in
Montgomery County, VA (Mountains and Valley). I'm unsure if all eight young
were still present on the second date.
The Potomac River birds were seen on the Piedmont. It'll be pretty tough to
figure out where these birds were born (I'm nothing if not a master of the
obvious). Regionally it's a pretty significant find.
Cheers,
Todd
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Todd Michael Day
Jeffersonton, Virginia, USA
Culpeper County
BlkVulture@xxxxxxx
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