Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:15:48 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Henry Armistead <74077.3176@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Hooper's I. Feb. 16 (Ipswich Sparrow) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Hooper's Island, Dorchester County, Maryland. Monday, February 16, 2004. 6:30 A.M. - 6:30 P.M. Clear, 20-31 degrees F., winds NE - NW 15 - 20 -10 - 5 m.p.h. 37 miles by car, 3 by foot. A cold, pretty day. Most ditches, small ponds, and narrow tidal guts still frozen. Bays open but bay water froze at places where it has splashed on the shore, railings, and rocks. 61 species. Landbirds very scarce. IPSWICH SPARROW. 1 feeding on the wrack line with several Herring and Ring-billed Gulls at Cat Cove about 0.3 mi. s. of the s. end of the Narrows Ferry Bridge. Not much sand here but the wrack line is on the edge of the sod bank, much of it looks like coffee grounds, and consists of a dark combination of disintegrated sod bank, rotted wood fragments, and long dead aquatic vegetation. A large, ghostly-pale Savannah Sparrow similar in color to the discolored, old bay ice plate remnants a few feet inland from the bird. The bird's paleness contrasted strikingly with the blackish-brown wrack line. Very tame and I could probably have gotten closer than the 50 feet or so that I did but I did not want to (and didn't) flush the bird. I am aware of at least 2 other county records. I found one at Cambridge on March 5, 1998. As chance would have it a few minutes later Marshall Iliff showed up (We were both chasing a non-existent Smew) and photographed it (see "Birding", April 1999, p. 151). I think Bruce Peterjohn saw one at Blackwater prior to that. I bet Ipswich Sparrow shows up regularly on the sparse beachey shores of the Maryland part of the Chesapeake. I wonder what their route is? My guess is that they fly down along the coast to Cape Charles, and then a few work their way up the Bay (rather than fly overland). Didn't one show up as far north as Hart-Miller islands once? Also: Horned Grebe 11, Great Blue Heron 11, Tundra Swan 595, Mute Swan 240, Green-winged Teal 70, Mallard 285, Northern Pintail 85, Canvasback 290, Greater Scaup 1, Lesser Scaup 155, Long-tailed Duck 30 (Narrows Ferry Bridge), Black Scoter 6, Surf Scoter 345, Hooded Merganser 7, Red-breasted Merganser 55, Bald Eagle 13, Peregrine Falcon 1 (an adult perched on drift wood on a sand bar in Tar Bay; a Sanderling flew right by it), Sanderling 7, Dunlin 270, Bonaparte's Gull 4 (adults, Tar Bay), Rock Pigeon 26 (the bridge at Fishing Creek [the creek not the town] is one of the best places in the county for them), Belted Kingfisher 1, Hermit Thrush 4, Pine Warbler 2 (pretty males), Boat-tailed Grackle 7 (from Swan Harbor Road), House Finch 1 male. Two titmice were singing. Most of the scoters, pintails, and teal were seen from the north end of Meekins Neck. Missed were: Common Loon, Redhead, Killdeer, Mourning Dove, Carolina Wren (!!!), and Swamp Sparrow. Mammals. 1 ea. of Raccoon, Muskrat (sort of; recently trapped by Cory Pitrone, the caretaker for the Tony Belfiore property) and Fox Squirrel. The squirrel was on Rt. 335 next to the Tubman Chapel across from St. Mary Star of the Sea R.C. Church. Only when the streaking potato chip truck was about 20 feet away from it did it scamper from the road. Low SAT scores. One of the residents of Swan Harbor Road I talked with today said he and his family flushed about a dozen woodcock along the edge of the field at the T-junction of Swan Harbor Road and Rt. 335 one day back in January. That's a lot of timberdoodles for Dorchester in winter. He described them well. Son, George, was one of the leaders of Brian Patteson's pelagic trip off Cape Hatteras on Sat., Feb. 14, when they saw c. 239 Red Phalaropes. No skuas. On Sun., Feb. 15, a bunch of them, John Fussell, Ricky Davis et al., went out to Cape Point there and saw a Red-necked Grebe, 2 Little Gulls, and an estimated 8,875 (eight-thousand eight-hundred and seventy-five !!!) Razorbills. 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 ======================================================================= =========================================================================