BLACKWATER NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, September 16, 2012.
A few of these were seen before or after the official bird count or else at Cambridge or Egypt Road.
PARTICIPANTS: Harry Armistead, Liz Armistead, Karen Caruso, Angelo, Stephen & Stephanie Giarratano, Bill Hill, Jane Hill, Dotty Mumford, and Levin Willey.
7:15 A.M. � 12:30 P.M. Approximate numbers:
Canada Goose 40. Mute Swan 1. Wood Duck 2. American Black Duck 1. Mallard 25. Blue-winged Teal 30. Green-winged Teal 90. Wild Turkey (some of the group saw these from Egypt Road before the birdwalk started; I�m not sure of the number but think it was 7 ?). Pied-billed Grebe 1. American White Pelican 1. Great Blue Heron 7. Great Egret 15. Snowy Egret 4. Turkey Vulture 15. Bald Eagle 20. American Kestrel 7. Virginia Rail 2.
Black-bellied Plover 4. Semipalmated Plover 16. Killdeer 2. Greater Yellowlegs 6. Lesser Yellowlegs 8. Semipalmated Sandpiper 12. Least Sandpiper 20. unID�d peep 125. Pectoral Sandpiper 4. Stilt Sandpiper 2. Good views of some of the peep right next to the Drive on the muddy margins.
Laughing Gull 30. Ring-billed Gull 6. Herring Gull 8 (Cambridge). Great Black-backed Gull 8 (Cambridge). Caspian Tern 12. Forster�s Tern 80 (most of them seen along the Sewards causeway).
Mourning Dove 20. Ruby-throated Hummingbird 1 (close but fleeting view from the Wildlife Drive dike). Belted Kingfisher 2. Red-headed Woodpecker 3 (2 adults, 1 immature). Red-bellied Woodpecker 2. Downy Woodpecker 2. Northern Flicker 2. Pileated Woodpecker 1. Eastern Wood-Pewee 1. Eastern Phoebe 1. Blue Jay 3. American Crow 8. Horned Lark 3 (3, I think; seen by non-Armisteads along Egypt Road). Tree Swallow 2.
Carolina Chickadee 4 (+ 1 dead-on-the-road; requiescat in pavement). Red-breasted Nuthatch 1. Brown-headed Nuthatch 9 of the little things. Carolina Wren 3. Eastern Bluebird 4. American Robin 2. Northern Mockingbird 3. European Starling 45. Cedar Waxwing X (sorry, I forgot to record the numbers). Chipping Sparrow 2. Northern Cardinal 3. Bobolink 20. Red-winged Blackbird 45. American Goldfinch 2.
61 species. A very poor day for migrating passerines and neotropical species but only a county north of here was a good day for those. Water levels in tidal areas (Blackwater River and surrounds) low, high in impoundments. Light winds. Fair skies. Temps in the 70s. The blooming Tickseed Sunflowers form a brilliant yellow spectacle in some spots. Only a few Marsh Hibiscus are still in bloom. Not many dragonflies. No froggies. Many thanks to Karen Caruso for keeping track of the birds.
NON-AVIAN TAXA: Butterflies: Monarch 40, Black Swallowtail 5, Buckeye 6, Red Admiral 1. Mammals: Gray Squirrel 1, Fox Squirrel 1 (nice view as it descended a big Lololly Pine headfirst with a pine cone in its jaws, long bushy tail straight out behind it), Eastern Cottontail 7 (concentrated right around the Visitor Center, tame). Herps: Eastern Painted Turtle 6, Red-bellied Slider 7.
REALLY NON-AVIAN TAXA. Virginia Saltmarsh Mallow. Many thanks to Jane Hill for, after the fact, identifying later from reference books a plant with small pink blossoms we saw along the Sewards causeway as Virginia Saltmarsh Mallow (Kosteletzkya virginica). Incidentally, Jane is translating from the French an Eighteenth Century (I think it�s the 18th) treatise on botany, to be published by Springer. Today they carried a fine book with them on dragonflies of Georgia and environs. Bill Hill has also set me straight on certain aspects of the Patrick O�Brian seafaring, Napoleonic wars novels that had bewildered me.
INSECTS. The Visitor Center at Blackwater doesn�t just sell stuffed animals, postcards, books on waterfowl, and other fluff. It has a real good selection of books and attractive, excellent, arty, matted color photographs of wildlife. Today I purchased 2 fine books on bugs: Natural history of Delmarva dragonflies and damselflies by Hal White (U. of Delaware Press, 2011, 284p.) and The songs of insects by Lang Elliott and Wil Hershberger (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006, 227p. + an accompanying CD). The former is not intened to be an ID guide but instead has good photographs and interesting anecdotal information. The latter has astoundingly excellent photographs, big or bigger than life.
CICADAS. The cicadas along the entrance to Wildlife Drive have been almost deafening, cutting loose with an electric sounding, pulsing song that sounds like power lines gone slightly haywire (and awry, too). I have not heard these insects very far north of here. I hear them at Kiptopeke also. And Irish Grove. They sound like the song of the Scissor-grinder Cicada (Tibicen pruinosa), but the range map in Elliott and Hershberger indicates that species is not found here. Can anyone help me out with this?
ADDENDUM TO THE REPORT OF THE 17TH DORCHESTER COUNTY FALL BIRD COUNT, September 15, 2012: Add these names of the list of Taylor�s Island participants: Rose Anderson, Mike Irons, and M. J. Wiebe. Thus the total number of participants on the count becomes 22.
Best to all. � Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.
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