Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 11:06:10 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Henry Armistead <74077.3176@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Wachapreague & St. Michaels CBC's MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii 2 early Christmas counts. Grand totals for each CBC (esp. the St. Michaels one), when shown, are in parentheses and unofficial - such as I was able to glean in an exhausted condition at the 2 compilations. Two states are involved here ... another bi-riparian posting. December 15, 2001. Sat. Cedar Island, Accomack Co., VA (Wachapreague C.B.C.) 8 A.M. - 4:30 P.M. Mild temperatures in the 50's all day. Winds 20 - 45 mph. Harry Armistead, Mel Baughman, Judy Fieth, Michael Male & Monica Sclaefer. 7 mi. on foot, 20 by boat. Blowing a gale, let me tell you, and we were walking into the wind all day. 1 gannet, 3 Great Egrets, 30 Tricolored Herons, 1375 Brant, 1 Common Goldeneye (1), 8 (only) Hooded Mergansers, 5 imm. & 3 ad. Bald Eagles, 11 harriers, 1 ad. male & 1 ad. female Peregrine Falcon (the female stole a small-duck-sized prey item from the male), 325 Black-bellied & 9 Semipalmated Plovers, 75 Willets, 8 Marbled Godwits, 8 Red Knots (8), 30 Western (36) & 1 Least Sandpiper (1), 8000 Dunlin, 5 Short-billed Dowitchers, 1 first-year Iceland Gull (1), 2000 Herring Gulls, 81 Forster's Terns (96), 1 Marsh Wren (1), Brown-headed Nuthatch 0 (3), 2 Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed, 6 sharp-tailed (sp.), 3 Ipswich & 1 Seaside Sparrow. Total of 50 species (109) seen on Cedar Island or in the surrounding marshlands. Numbers of all ducks seemed low but many thousands of Snow (plus dozens of Blue) Geese streamed by us on the drive down to the launching ramp at Wachapreague. The high winds plus the low tide in the afternoon made it difficult to find wrens and sparrows in the saltmarsh. I indulged again in my annual tradition on this count of eating some Salicornia picked from the high saltpans back of the dunes. The Iceland Gull was a beauty, working north along the beach and water's edge closeby and surprising us as we were resting and eating lunch in the dunes. I think it's a first for this count. Great shorebirding as always ... the flats close to and north of Folly Creek are immense. Michael & Judy not only ferried us around expertly in their 19 foot Carolina Skiff, making 3 difficult and somewhat risky landings, but also found the lion's share of many of the waterbirds, greeted us with hot coffee when they picked us up on the north end of Cedar I. at 4, and then gave us hot buttered rum back at their Locustville house afterwards while thousands of Snow Geese streamed overhead. What a GREAT day! Dec. 16, a.k.a. Sunday. 'Rigby's Folly', our family vacation home, Ferry Neck, Talbot County, MD, near Bellevue plus Deep Neck and the rest of Ferry Neck (St. Michaels C.B.C.). 6:30 A.M. - 5 P.M. Clear to fair. 35 - 46 degrees F. Wind calm - 5-10 mph NW but mostly calmish today. 69 species (c. 95). Harry Armistead & Bob Ringler. Common Loon 11 (71). Great Blue Heron 6 (78). Mute Swan 42 (749). Canada Goose 4650 (36,146). Green-winged Teal 11 (11). Long-tailed Duck 230 (4521). White-winged Scoter 1 male, up a protected creek, next to the bank 30 feet away from us, a beauty but with a bad left wing, probably due to the barbaric sea duck hunting season (target practice). Hooded Merganser 8. Bald Eagle 3 (37). 1 ad. Red-shouldered Hawk, one of the planet's loveliest birds. Osprey 0 (2; 2nd count record?). bobwhite 0 (44). Sanderling 8 (8) at Benoni Point. Lesser Black-backed Gull 0 (1). Herring Gull 790 (1368), this is a huge number for our party area. Forster's Tern 0 (29). Mourning Dove 149 (448). screech owl 2 (30). horned owl 2 (30). sapsucker 0 (30). Red-breasted Nuthatch 3 (73). White-breasted Nuthatch 4 (26). Brown Creeper 1 (23). Ruby-crowned Kinglet 7 (46). bluebird 44 (383). Cedar Waxwing 0 (122). Pine Warbler 0 (4). towhee 5 (37). Fox Sparrow 0 (27). White-crowned Sparrow 0 (1). junco 71 (1001). Purple Finch 0 (2). Our owls were surprisingly hard to come by given what seemed to be ideal conditions. Good numbers of fish-eating birds on the count with great loon, Herring Gull, great blue, and Forster's Tern totals. On this count I usually conduct a dusk accipiter watch at Rigby and sure enough we saw a sharpy there, 2 thrashers calling at 4:55 P.M., and an adult eagle going to roost in a big loblolly very close to its nest. A thoroughly lovely early winter day with calm (and very clear) waters. Last call for the Cape Charles Christmas count, Sunday, December 30. Best to all.-Harry Armistead, 523 E. Durham St., Philadelphia, PA 19119-1225. Any off-list replies, please, to: harryarmistead@hotmail.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================