Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 11:16:34 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Henry Armistead <74077.3176@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Bloodsworth I., Bishop's Head & Ferry Neck MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline "Rigby's Folly", Armistead property on Ferry Neck, Talbot County, MD, near Bellevue. September 7, 2002, 1:30 - 8 P.M. clear, NE 5-10, SW 10 - calm, 86-75F. 53 species. 1 WHITE-THROATED SPARROW - previous earliest was 1 I banded on Sept. 26 one year. Also, 65 Mute Swans, 3 ad. Bald Eagles (spectacular chases, 1 bird probably an interloper), 2 sharpies, 3 Royal & 20 Forster's Terns, 3 empids (looked like "Traill's" types) & a Swainson's Thrush. I heard at close range a starling imitate, in their usual sotto voce manner: Pileated Woodpecker, Common Grackle & American Crow! 1 very small, spotted fawn. This year I suppose due to the terrible drought our 1 clump of Marsh Hibiscus never bloomed. Found a little patch of Sea Lavender in our small saltmarsh. There certainly were no warblers to speak of anywhere I went these 3 days. Sept. 8, Rigby's Folly, 6 A.M. - 12:30 P.M. fair, NE 5-10, 66-78F. 51 species. 105 Fish Crows, 7 titmice, 2 White-eyed Vireos (both singing), 3 Scarlet Tanagers & 2 Blue Grosbeaks. Also 6 Gray Squirrels, 6 deer, 2 Box & 1 Mud Turtle, 3 Cloudless Sulphurs. Blackwater N.W.R. Quick drive through. 800 dabbling ducks, looked mostly like Green-winged Teal, on the Blackwater River just e. of the Rt. 335 bridge. In spite of 4" of rain here last weekend the impoundments are still extremely low. Great hummingbird show at the Visitor Center feeders. Bishop's Head Point, Dorchester Co. (Chesapeake Bay Foundation Noonan Center), late afternoon: 3 Bald Eagles roosting in the nearby Loblolly Pine hammock, 1 Great Horned Owl, and an evening flight out to their central Bay island roosting areas of 52 Double-crested Cormorants, 135 Snowy & 72 Great Egrets & 17 Tricolored Herons. 1 Virginia Rail calling in the Juncus roemerianus marsh. This C.B.F. center is a dream house with great charts, photographs, and maps over the walls, old hammer action shotguns and bottles on display, a Clivus Multrum (what's the plural?) waste system, a small library, solar panels, small rock jetties, a good dock and boats, and splendid views on the Bay including Bloodsworth Island 1.2 mi. to the west. The center is named in memory of Karen Elizabeth Noonan, a beautiful and caring Boston College student and promising teacher killed in the terrorist plane explosion over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988. Sept. 9. Bloodsworth Island, 9:30 A.M. - 5 P.M. fair - clear, N-NE 10-15, 70-80F. A gem of a day. low tide to start then an extremely high high tide. Most of the time was spent working (see below). 0 Great Blue Herons (!), 5 Little Blue, 1 Yellow-crowned and 7 Black-crowned Night Herons, 1 Marsh Wren, 2 Seaside Sparrows, 1 Clapper Rail, 1 black duck, 1 Great-crested Flycatcher, 140 Mute Swan, 3 catbirds, 12 Brown Pelicans, a yellowthroat, 2 Carolina Wrens, 1 Caspian Tern. Also: hundreds of Seaside Dragonlets ("The only dragonfly in the Western Hemisphere that can breed in undiluted seawater" - "Dragonflies through binoculars" by Sidney W. Dunkle, p. 206), 8 Diamondback Terrapin, 1 Monarch & 3 Cloudless Sulphurs. About 18 of us (mostly Navy and state personnel) were here to begin a 4-day project masterminded by the Conservation Division of Patuxent Naval Air Station to build and erect 49 poles, each with 2 nesting platforms, for Great Blue Herons. Previously big H53 Sea Stallion helicopters (which can airlift tanks) had brought over the heavy timber (7 or 8 tons) plus a New Holland LS180, 2-speed, Super Boom "Bob Cat", a marvelous tracked vehicle, this one with a 5+ foot long, 9" wide augur to make holes for the 20' poles. After the holes are made big, white plastic tubes 8" in diameter are inserted to hold the sides of the sometimes spongy holes until the poles are inserted. Today we were concerned mostly with assembly, carpentry, and building the 100 or so platforms, and also hauling tarps, smaller lumber, power tools, boxes of nails and bolts, food, drink, etc., to the site on the east side of Fin Creek. Botanist Charlie Davis was doing a plant survey in the area. The C.B.F. let us stay in the commodious, attractive lodge. Two explosive ordnance disposal specialists from Dahlgren powered over in a big Zodiac to be present near the Bob Cat as it drilled holes and they did find some fire bombs and 5" projectiles. Among those present were Kyle Rambo, Doug Lister, John Gill (USF&WS, in charge of the islands component of Chesapeake Marshlands N.W.R. Complex, nee Blackwater N.W.R.), Kevin Weinelt, Kevin Ruoff, Skip Simpson, Joe Hautzenroder, and Carl Dyson. By way of background, Bloodsworth has been a naval shelling and weapons testing area since WWII. I believe John Weske was the first ornithologist to visit here, in the summer of 1963. I made my first visit in 1967, when 180 or so pairs of great blues nested here on the large, recently dead loblollies that until the sixties sometime comprised a considerable forest along Fin Creek Ridge. The Navy first installed nesting platforms in 1983. They have been hugely successful. Suffice it to say today was a real workout. Out of many hundreds of chances I only hammered myself once (left index finger). I think I might have been the only one present who was there on their own time. All involved did an excellent job of planning and supervising. By the end of today we had finished what they had hoped would be done in 2 days. The project is due to be finished on Sept. 12, Thu., with minor cleanup operations on Friday. Even if it rains they will continue working. We sometimes forget that military facilities do a great deal of good for environmental causes (THIS from a liberal Democrat) even though this is something that is at best ancillary to their main missions, which are often terribly destructive. Military bases now have hundreds of staff whose responsibility is with things environmental. After finishing work today 3 of us went to see the 3 gravestones in the midst of a real tangle of poison ivy, thorns, Baccharis halimifolia, small locusts and cherries, pokeberries, etc., that sometimes necessitated us getting down on our hands and knees on ground covered with GBH guano, fox urine, stray feathers, and decomposing heron corpses. Even before this we were already to varying degrees wet and splattered with mud. Sarah Bloodsworth, born December 12, 1798, died September 12, 1888, aged 84 years & 9 months. Mary E. Bloodsworth, wife of Andrew Bloodsworth, 1850-1882. William B. Bloodsworth, 1802-1885. The graves stand there as straight as if these end dates were yesterday. There's a lovely photograph of Sarah's gravestone on p. 108 of "the Great Marsh: an intimate journey into a Chesapeake wetland" by David W. Harp (photographer) and Tom Horton (writer), Johns Hopkins. U. Pr., 2002. Several great blue nests are visible in the background. "The 1887 atlases ..." maps (bicentennial edition, p. 80, published by the Wicomico Bicentennial Commission, 1976), shows these households on Bloodsworth at that time: 4 Bloodsworth, 2 Murphy, 1 Parks, 1 Lilley, 1 Fisher, 2 Todd, and 1 Thomas. After it was over I drove for a mile or so from the C.B.F. lodge, where my grandfather Henry Tucker sometimes hunted in the 1920's, out Phillips Gunning Club Road. Much of the road was under tidal water. Where else can you see a roadkill Blue Crab? 105 Boat-tailed Grackles, mostly tailless males, lifted off from the road shoulders. Countless tens of thousands of periwinkles (Boat-tail food) snailed up the Spartina alterniflora stems, easing away from the rising tides. I thank Kyle Rambo for inviting me to be included in this project and for teaching me much about Bloodsworth Island. Best to all.-Harry Armistead, 523 E. Durham St., Philadelphia, PA 19119-1225. 215-248-4120. Please, any off-list replies 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 ======================================================================= =========================================================================