ELLIOTT ISLAND ROAD (from Vienna & Route 50 south to the village of
Elliott), Dorchester County, MD.  Saturday, January 29, 2005, the last day
of the duck and goose hunting season but not many shots fired today because
of all the ice.  6:40 A.M. - 6:05 P.M.  73 miles by car, 3 by foot.  Clear
to fair to mostly high haze, then mostly high clouds, then overcast. 
Temperature 12 degrees F. to 38 to 34 at dusk.  Winds mostly calm or very
light and variable but rising to 15 m.p.h. from the south or southwest for
a while at midday.  Tide high to low to high.  A couple of inches of snow
on the ground for a week or so.  Almost all waters frozen.  74 species (16
waterfowl, 10 raptors).

A GEM of a day made memorable by the lack of wind, the sunshine, the
leftover snow, and the ice everywhere.  In the early morning the Spartina
and Juncus grasses in the vast marshes are covered with frost, spangled
with countless little glimmering lights as the sun rises.  In spite of all
the birds ("In the alive of winter") there are many times on the marsh when
not a bird is seen or heard.     
 
HIGHLIGHTS:  2 imm. Double-crested Cormorants on the upper Nanticoke River,
the first I've ever seen in the county in winter ... finally.  560 American
Black Ducks, most of them on the Nanticoke marshes, few of which I would
have seen except they kept flushing when eagles flew over.  580 Common
Mergansers concentrated on Fishing Bay where there was open water off
Fishing Point, the most I've ever seen in the county.  1 adult Golden
Eagle, golden nape, no white visible on wings or tail, flew low across the
E.I.R. road near Kraft Neck Road.  53 Bald Eagles, balds in sight all day,
especially on the upper Nanticoke, my best count for E.I.R.  83 Wild
Turkeys in one group just SW of Kraft Neck X Elliott Island roads, biggest
flock I've ever seen but others have seen bigger flocks on the Eastern
Shore recently.  1030 Herring Gulls, concentrated by the ice apparently,
with 890 on the Nanticoke just south of the Route 50 bridge.  2 Tree
Swallows seen from Lewis Wharf Road.  9 Hermit Thrushes, some eating Smilax
berries.  53 Boat-tailed Grackles, a good count considering they've been
getting scarcer in the county, seen just before sunset flying south at
Gadwall Bend heading somewhere to roost.  9 Fox Sparrows.  165 Song
Sparrows.

ROAD SHOULDER BIRDS.  Concentrated because of the snow.  Most of the 165
Song & the 9 Fox sparrows, 9 Hermit Thrushes, 60 Swamp and 32
White-throated sparrows were seen on the road shoulders.  OWLS.  5 each of
screech and horned owls.  1 of the screech-owls I called up at 1:30 P.M.  2
of the horned owls were calling spontaneously at 2:15 P.M.  Looked hard for
Short-eared Owls to no avail.  ROUTE 50 BORROW PIT north of Vienna and
north of route 50.  Mostly frozen but a small open area on the south side
had a few Canvasbacks, 4 Gadwall, 6 coots, and 75 Ring-necked Ducks. 
MAMMALS.  1 Eastern Cottontail.  1 Fox Squirrel feeding out in a field near
the turkeys.

RESTRICTED OPEN WATERS AT FISHING POINT.  The only substantial open water
except for stretches of the Nanticoke River.  Loaded with divers including
30 Canvasbacks, 40 Lesser Scaup, 135 Common Goldeneyes, 75 Buffleheads, 2
Long-tailed Ducks, 120 Ruddy Ducks, all those hundreds of Common Mergansers
(many of them most of the way across Fishing Bay towards the Toddville
side), and 105 Red-breasted Mergansers.  

ALSO OF INTEREST:  1 Pied-billed Grebe at the Vienna launching ramp.  16
Great Blue Herons, most of them out on the Nanticoke looking miserable
standing on the ice.  But 1 Tundra Swan, in a field, an immature.  1 each
of Sharp-shinned, Cooper's, Red-shouldered, and Rough-legged Hawks.  130
Turkey & 23 Black vultures (excellent day for soaring birds).  8 Greater
Yellowlegs.  1 Dunlin (McCready's Creek).  Only 4 Mourning Doves.  2
Brown-headed Nuthatches at Langrell's Island picking at pine cones.  2
Brown Thrashers, also at Langrell's.  3500 Common Grackles in 2 flocks at
dusk heading south at Gadwall Bend.

NOCTURNAL HOUSE SPARROWS again (Passer domesticus wawaensis).  At 5:55 A.M.
6 were actively foraging at service bay 5 of the Cambridge Wawa.  When I
left the store 1 of them flew out from under my car.  Many Red-winged
Blackbirds singing today.  MISSED:  Surf Scoter, Hooded Merganser, any
falcon, Killdeer, kingfisher, titmouse, House Finch, Savannah Sparrow.

LEWIS WHARF ROAD.  There is a big growth of Japanese Knotweed here in the
summer.  Lots to see today, hundreds of Mallards and black ducks, the
cormorants, great blues on the ice, 15 or more eagles, a flock of 20 Black
Vultures and dozens of TVs.  Could have spent hours here.  Two fellows were
tending their gill nets, catching Gizzard Shad and some Striped Bass they
either did not want or else were illegal to catch today.  Worried that they
would not be able to keep the river open so they can net, the answer to
their dreams was a tug, the Jacqueline A (Wilmington, Delaware), pushing
barge L118 upriver, headed toward Seaford.  As this rig approached, its
wide, bevelled bow hit the loose ice, making an impressive growling,
roaring noise interspersed with quiet areas of clear water.  As the
Jacqueline's wake and water from its immense displacement rolled to the
shore it roiled a large area full of loose, clear, thin shingles, plates,
and panes of ice right next to me, causing a lovely, musical tnkling and
ringing, the Nanticoke's answer to wind chimes, or, for that matter,
Tchaikovsky's "Winter Dreams" symphony, with apologies to Handel for citing
his Water Music last in this list.

SCENES.  Out on the Bay in the distance are several "erratics", big piles
of ice thousands of feet from any land, looking like little icebergs. 
Stranded ice slabs on the banks of Fishing Bay as the tide receded.  Not
the huge slabs there are in some years but nevertheless impressive.  A 360
degree sun dog around the sun at 11:45 A.M.  At 4:30 P.M. it was overcast
but there was a bright area in the western sky where the sun created a
beautiful, bright presence, luminous and incandescent, through the clouds. 
There were a few marsh fires today in the distance.  Several small areas of
the Eliiott marshes have already been burned.  I still fail to see the
wisdom of this, this in the face of the current overwhelming political
correctness of fires (but usually in different contexts, i.e., in forested
areas).  The snow begins again at 7:45 P.M.  

A man, Joseph Radtka, and his entourage stopped to talk.  They were
hunting.  Later I saw them again at Fishing Point, where they set up their
decoys.  They own some of the land there as well as marsh elsewhere along
E.I.R. and it was nice to see them out enjoying it all today.  As is the
case most days several folks stopped to ask if I needed help.  When this
happens, aside from their really being ready to help, many of them stop to
try to figure out what it is exactly you are doing and/or to talk.  One of
them, a ruddy farmer, addressed me as "captain."  Getting into the spirit
of things, I stopped outside of Easton.  Here a middle-aged white man had
somehow managed to lock himself out of his car at 5 A.M.  There were no
buildings or anything here.  No evidence of it, but I suspect he had been
up all night, perhaps drinking, and had stopped to take a leak.  Gave him a
lift to town. 

"Rigby's Folly", Armistead property on Ferry Neck, Talbot County, MD, near
Bellevue.  Yesterday, Jan. 28, Fri., it went down to 8 degrees F. here and
the line between the pump and the tank was frozen in the Pump House, even
though the Pump House temperature is maintained at 52.  But down at ground
level it was cold enough to freeze that line.  Result was no water in our
house until Dana Sindermann and his son spent 2 hours thawing it out. 

I'd hoped to spend Sunday looking at the ice situation on the Choptank
River around Rigby and enjoying the winter desolation but it was variously
snowing and sleeting when I woke up.  In view of the jumpy weather forecast
it seemed prudent to make my way back to Philadelphia at mid-day in hours
of daylight.  Saw a Gray Squirrel in the yard and then a red-tail on the
way out the drive.  Pines and cedars bowed down somewhat with heavy, wet
snow and sleet.  5 inches of snow officially from last weekend's snowfall
and 1-3 inches forecast for today. 

Best to all.-Harry Armistead, 523 E. Durham St., Philadelphia, PA
19119-1225.  215-248-4120.  Please, any off-list replies to: 


"The landscape itself, with its shifting and melting ice, its mirages,
glaciers, and drifting icebergs, is less a description of desolation than
an ode to the beauty of impermanence."  (p. xiii)  - Gretel Ehrlich, "Cold
heaven: seven seasons in Greenland" (Pantheon Books, 2001).