This year, DLITE will be helping out with an ambitious project to measure changes in breeding bird populations on the shore. In 1983, the Maryland Ornithological Society along with other conservation groups gathered researchers and volunteers from around the state to conduct a 5-year breeding bird atlas survey of Maryland. In 1987, this landmark effort culminated in the 500-page "Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Maryland and the District of Columbia."

Twenty years later, the time has come to reassess what is going on with birds breeding in the state. Have distributions changed? Are populations increasing or decreasing and why? Do certain habitats need to be protected?

For this second highly touted Ornithological Society effort, DLITE is contributing work to study breeding birds in the four counties that make up Maryland's lower shore. With the most diverse bird population in the state, the lower shore is of particular interest to researchers. Although this area makes up less than 1/15 of the total land in Maryland, it is tops in some 70 percent of all breeding species in the state. The 1983 survey showed the region to boast not only more species, but more rare, threatened and endangered species than any region.

Breeding species Worcester, Somerset, Wicomico, and Dorchester counties was at the top in for 1983-1987 included great, snowy and cattle egrets, little blue, great blue, and tri-colored herons, black-crowned and yellow-crowned night herons, glossy ibis, pied-billed grebes, brown pelicans, double-crested cormorants, American bitterns, blue-winged teal, gadwals, northern harriers, bald eagles, Virginia and clapper rails, piping plovers, black-necked stilts, American oystercatchers, willets, laughing gulls, herring gulls, great black-backed gulls, gull-billed terns, royal terns, common terns, Forster's terns, least terns, black skimmers, chuck-wills-widows, red-headed woodpeckers, boat-tailed grackles, sedge, Carolina, and marsh wrens, seaside sparrows, salt marsh sharp-tailed sparrows, summer tanagers, Louisiana waterthushes, ovenbirds, worm-eating, prothonotary, black and white, Swainson's, prairie, pine, and yellow-throated warblers, yellow throated vireos, blue-gray gnatcatchers, brown creepers, and brown-headed nuthatches.

In addition to breeding, the county serves as the primary north-south thoroughfare for migrating ducks, raptors, wading birds and songbirds. DLITE plans to use the results to help get nature tourists to the birds they seek.

To volunteer, above-average or better birders should contact Walter Ellison at 410-778-9568 or visit: www.mdbirds.org/atlas.html Property owners interested in which birds are breeding on their property can help by calling Ellison to allow researchers access to their land. This project represents the most comprehensive bird work in Maryland.