Hi All,

No Cave Swallows over the waters around Eastern Neck Island yesterday, so Kent County has yet to join the party. Congratulations to the seven Maryland counties that have added Cave Swallow over the past few weeks.

Nancy and I, after spending the morning watching our feeders, took off for a few afternoon hours at Eastern Neck Island yesterday. The feeders hosted two brown Purple Finches, and a male Red-breasted Nuthatch. The finches are not an every day event, as they were in November, but a few have shown up at two-to-three day intervals of late. 

Eastern Neck Island was in excellent form, and visibility for long-range 60X scoping was remarkable. The Baltimore skyline looked amazingly sharp yesterday and I could see size and shape detail on distant cormorants sitting on navigation markers north of Love Point from the Bay Butterfly Trail.

Highlights at Eastern Neck included three GREAT CORMORANTS. Two were sitting with five Double-cresteds on a yellow navigation marker north of Kent I. (Love Ponit Light?). If my check of the maps is right, these birds were at least two miles away. They were bigger, thicker necked, and broader in outline than the Double-crests. I also saw an immature fishing in the company of 10 Long-tailed Ducks off Bogle's Wharf. Also at Bogle's Wharf were a RED-THROATED LOON, 5 Horned Grebes, a BLACK SCOTER, and one of two Forster's Terns seen on the Island. The big show at Bogle's was provided by over *2000* Greater Scaup in a raft not far offshore that spanned the horizon (there were a few, probably less than 100, Lessers). A bit up the road from Bogle's were 50 Yellow-rumped (Myrtle) Warblers feeding in berry-laden waxmyrtle, there was enough fruit that I would expect these birds will still be around for the Lower Kent CBC. 

Between Calf Pasture Cove and the Eastern Neck Narrows were three Pied-billed Grebes, about 300 Tundra Swans, 60 Gadwall, 70 American Wigeon, 20 Ring-necked Ducks, 30 Red-breasted Mergansers, 3 Hooded Mergansers, and 4 Bonaparte's Gulls. There were 50 Canvasbacks off the mouth of Church Creek east of the Narrows bridge. We also had a late OSPREY in the pine snag west of the intersection of the main road and the turn to Bogle's Wharf, and a calling Marsh Wren (tchek-tchek) at the observation tower at Tubby Cove. We're looking forward to the Christmas Bird Count on Sunday.

Good Birding,  

Walter Ellison

23460 Clarissa Road
Chestertown, MD 21620
phone: 410-778-9568
e-mail: 

"A person who is looking for something doesn't travel very fast" - E. B. White (in "Stuart Little")

"Are there *ever* enough birds?" - Connie Hagar as quoted by Edwin Way Teale in "Wandering through Winter"