Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 11:38:31 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding <MDOSPREY@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM> Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding <MDOSPREY@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM> From: Henry Armistead <74077.3176@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Caroline County (mostly) March 17 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii March 17, 2001, Caroline County, MD, 10 A.M. - 6 P.M. Overcast but no rain. 45-50 degrees. Light or no wind all day. George and Harry Armistead. 72 species. We started out by checking c. 2,330 Ring-billed Gulls in 3 fields in Talbot County but could not find any unusual gulls. The Tanyard marsh was the first Caroline stop. Lots of activity here: 50 Green-winged Teal, 50 Lesser Yellowlegs, 80 snipe (most I've ever seen in one day in Delmarva), 195 Laughing and 1 Bonaparte's Gull. 8 additional waterfowl species, several Ospreys and 2 Bald Eagles also. At Choptank there were 55 Great Black-backed Gulls. Seems like a lot for "inland" Caroline. But the broad expanse of the Choptank River was bereft of waterfowl, save for 2 Mute Swans (We saw 4 pairs in Caroline today). Just north of Sparks X Stevenson Roads we scrutinized 61 Horned Larks but failed to see any longspurs. I think that's where they'd been seen earlier in the winter. Near here a mockingbird was doing what seemed to be an imitation of the call (not the song) of Upland Sandpiper, plus thrasher note. Uppies occur in these fields in late summer. Save for a few Ring-billeds and Ring-neckeds the Denton wastewater ponds were empty of birds. Same for the Ridgely ponds except for a female Red-breasted Merganser, an odd place for one. Day totals: 55 D.-c. Cormorants, 29 Ring-necked Ducks (at 4 places), 56 Common Mergansers (seen at 6 places; a lot for Caroline?), 6 Blue-winged Teal, 7 Bald Eagles, 63 Great Black-backed Gulls, 3 sapsuckers, 530 American Robins (probably underestimated; many fields were loaded with them, at least 2 fields having over 100), 50 Slate-colored Juncos (many singing), 8 imm. White-crowned Sparrows (neat Whitehaven X Stevenson Rds. in a nice scrubby, manured-up, seedy spot adjacent to fetid fields full of livestock) and 27 Field Sparrows (several singing). Strange misses: towhee, Chipping Sparrow, cowbird, and goldfinch. The Adkins Arboretum is beautiful with some lovely fields with abundant broom sedge. We could have spent the entire day there. Lots of Chorus Frogs and a few Spring Peppers calling today. Caroline County scamperthon. A total of 23 Gray Squirrels today, incl. 3 black ones at Caroline Country Club. Beavers. March 18, 2001. Nice, 100 foot+-long Beaver dam near mile post 119, Route 301 (Kent County), c. 1 mile south of the Sassafras turnoff, down a little ravine on the east side of 301. Since the Beaver is a world-class, ranking furball of the first order (forest fatty) I am glad they are present on the Eastern Shore, especially since I am still disconsolate from the absence in recent years of Woodchucks (field fatties) at Rigby, where we used to delight in the antics of family groups occasionally seen on the lawn there. Two years ago Beavers had a lodge just west of 301 a few feet north of the MD-DE line in a small channelized stream. Liz and I stopped there a week after I found this and saw a River Otter and a Beaver in the water right next to each other. A week later on my way south there were 2 Beaver roadkills right next to each other on the road shoulder there and no sign of any since then. But the milepost 119 ones are apparently carrying on. March 16, 2001, in Dorchester County, George and Marshall Iliff saw c. 125 Savannah Sparrows along Egypt Rd. plus one American Pipit and a few Horned Larks. They located the Orange-crowned Warbler in a Red Maple between stops 7 and 8 on Wildlife Drive at Blackwater N.W.R. plus 3 imm. White-crowned Sparrows. George and Marshall saw 3 Great Egrets in the county plus 6 Fox Squirrels (3 at Blackwater), incl. one that had several blackish areas of its pelage. Near Bellevue, Talbot County, they saw an ad. male Merlin perched in a half-dead maple earlier that day. Ospreys. In an earlier post someone (sorry, forget who) queried about returning Ospreys. S/he was interested that Marty Cribb saw his first later than many on the western shore and elsewhere. Smith Island is, after all, one of the great Osprey strongholds. I believe Ospreys return earlier to fresh or fresh-brackish areas than they do to saltier locations. We have yet to see any at salty Rigby, although today (March 18) George and I spent most of the day chainsawing and doing brush work, and yesterday we were mostly in Caroline County, where we seemed to see Ospreys everywhere (total of 28), including 6 active nests in sight from the end of Hog Island Rd. Perhaps the fishing is better for them up these streams and "rivers". I saw loads of herring right next to the shore (a dipnet length away from me) in Marshy Hope Creek at Federalsburg and the 4 characters (worthy of an Erskine Caldwell short story) we happened onto at the end of Stoney Point Rd., on Tuckahoe Creek, were catching lots of White Perch. At this latter site we had our last 2 species of the day, 2 ea. of Barred and Horned Owls, all calling spontaneously c. 5:45 P.M. Best to all.-Harry Armistead, 523 E. Durham St., Philadelphia, PA 19119-1225. ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================