Saturday, February 26, 2005. 

Pickering Creek Audubon Center, afternoon, 1 harrier, 2 Mallards, 2 black
ducks, 9 Green-winged Teal, and a Lesser Scaup.  Many, many Chorus Frogs
calling from the impoundments in spite of an inch or more of snow on most
of the grounds.  No sign of the Northern Shrike.  Nearby at the T-junction
of Little Park X Todds Corner roads in the lake on the north side of the
road were 5 Wood Ducks and 2 American Wigeon. 

"Rigby's Folly", Armistead property on Ferry Neck, Talbot County, MD, near
Bellevue.  4:45-6:15 P.M.  Ran into Ben & Frances Weems as well as Jim and
Carol Meholic and talked for a while.  Fair, temperature 44-40 degrees F.,
winds W5+ m.p.h.  Without trying to pull a stunt I found 14 waterfowl
species here in half an hour, including 24 Redheads, 200 Canvasbacks, 30
Lesser Scaup, 30 Common Goldeneyes, 85 Buffleheads, 2 Long-tailed Ducks, 60
Surf Scoters, 1 Red-breasted Merganser, 2 Mallards, 4 black ducks, 8
American Wigeon, 45 Mute & 20 Tundra swans, and 2,100 Canada Geese.  

Also: 3 Horned Grebes.  16 deer in Field 2 and 6 others seen from Lucy
Point on Deep Neck, these all does.  

The sign on our driveway was vandalized.  On the Eastern Shore everyone
refers to driveways as "lanes."  A nice new sign was just hung off a
Loblolly Pine on the right as you go in.  It has a schematic of the
driveway system but incorrectly shows Lytell as the first house, Meholic as
the last.  Butler in the middle is correct.  The right side of the sign
correctly shows the lane to Armistead's going off to the right.  On the
sign in rather deep bas-relief is a beautiful carved Bufflehead, a work of
art.  One of my favorite birds.  Here is a summary of its status at Rigby
from my records:

BUFFLEHEADS.  Highest counts:  2000 1/23/93.  1875 12/6/01.  1750 3/14/02. 
1070 3/17/95.  950 12/6/98.  640 1/27/02.  600 11/3/90 & 4/11/92.  590
1/12/02.  570 2/27/99.  550 11/14/87.  450 3/28/86.  Common-abundant
Nov.-Mar.  Has increased dramatically since about 1980.  Prior to that the
high was 150 11/2/75.  Extreme dates of occurence:  October 14 - May 2. 
400 as late as 4/20/84, 47 in cove 4/28/96, 20 5/1/78.  Often seen in cove.
 Local name: butterball, little dipper (Eastern Shore of Virginia).  I like
to call them Lesser Goldeneye. 

MUTE SWAN GOES AGONISTIC.  I know wildlife biologists would love to pin
this on the Mute Swan rap sheet.  I saw a cob Mute Swan chase 2 Tundra
Swans out of the cove.  However, I think it would have done the same to any
Mute Swan that came into its territory (except, of course, the pen). 
Closeby the two species fed next to each other in harmony and I have not
seen Mute Swans stomp on Tundra Swans elsewhere, ever. 

LAPWING JOURNALISM.  Impaled on the front screen door hook in a Ziploc bag
was a clipping from neighbor Wendy Miller from the Frederick [Maryland]
News-Post, Wed., Feb. 16, 2005, pp. A1 & A14, "Bird of prey: sighting of
foreign Northern Lapwing draws scores of birdwatchers to county" by Karen
Gardner.  Has 3 photographs, what looks like a good, detailed map, and a
sidebar with lapwing life history and biology information.  Pretty good bit
of journalism except for the curious title and the use of "sight" when I
believe "site" was intended.  Quotes Jim Stasz, Helen Patton and others. 
Not often that Maryland gets a new species anymore.   


Sunday, Fbruary 27.

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.  7 A.M.-1 P.M.  Clear with high haze
spreading in then becoming overcast, 28-40 degrees F., winds variously
NW-NE-NW 5-10 m.p.h then becoming calm, cold.  4 of us on the bird walk: 
Zeeger de Wilde, Mary Konchar, Wolf Hehn, and myself.  Absolutely nothing
out of the ordinary.  Spring is definitely on hold.  

14 Ring-necked Ducks (Pool 1).  80 shovelers.  25 black ducks.  35 Bald
Eagles, constantly in sight often 6-7 (maximum of 12) or more
simultaneously, lots of chases, barrel rolls, and close encounters but no
real talon-clasping freefalls seen.  1 female kingfisher seen to catch a
nice, fat minnow.  8 harriers.  36 Common & 10 Hooded mergansers.  7
Greater Yellowlegs.  2 Wood Ducks.  2 Savannah & 16 CHIPPING sparrows and 7
Horned Larks along Egypt Road.  20 Great Blue Herons.  520 Tundra Swans. 
Maybe 2,000 Snow Geese c. 75 of them Blues, flushed several times by eagles
but remained far out on the Blackwater River.  1 Sharp-shinned, 1 Cooper's
& 10 Red-tailed hawks.  95 Green-winged Teal.  215 pintails.  A mixed
blackbird flock, mostly red-wings and grackles, maybe 10,000.  

Saw a Red Fox at 7 A.M. at the T-junction of Key Wallace Drive X Egypt
Road.  Wolf Hehn spotted the 3 Fox Squirrels, one of which was busy
shredding a Loblolly Pine cone on the dike at the west end of Pool 3B,
spinning the cone, turning it over and over with seemingly endless
manipulations, a very labor intensive, but appealing species.        

Hooper's Island (didn't visit Meekins Neck or Swan Harbor).  1:30-4:15 P.M.
 Overcast, 36-38 degrees F., wind NW 10, cold and raw, penetrating.  11
Common Loons.  8 Horned Grebes.  146 REDHEADS, a pure flock except for 6
American Wigeon that were in attendance hoping to pick up any scraps the
way they do with feeding Tundra Swans - in the Honga River offshore from
Hoopersville.  160 Canvasbacks.  12 Long-tailed Ducks around the Narrows
Ferry Bridge, a favorite area of theirs.  200 Surf Scoters, mostly in the
Honga River.  1 Ruddy Duck.  1 Cooper's Hawk.  4 Red-tailed Hawks.  Only 2
Bald Eagles, on Lower Hooper's Island.  1 Killdeer.  72 Dunlin, roosting at
high tide on one of the experimental rock jetties south of Narrows Ferry
Bridge.  6 Boat-tailed Grackles.  Found a nice plastic container in the
flotsam and jetsam, perfect condition, could easily hold 2 bushels of fish.
 

Rigby's Folly, 5:45-6:15 P.M.  Had to go back to retrieve some items I'd
forgotten.  Overcast, 35 degrees F., dead calm, Choptank River mouth
glassy, excellent visibility.  5 Horned Grebes.  225 Canvasbacks.  2,150
Surf Scoters.  An adult Bald Eagle roosting next to the Frog Hollow eagle
nest.  Great Horned Owl perched atop a pole in the open in front of the
house.  I stopped to glass it, then walked by less than 100 yards away.  It
didn't flush.    

SKIPJACK CORRIGENDA & ADDENDA.  My last posting contained several errors in
the skipjack paragraph.  The small craft slung aft on them are, of course,
pushboats, not lifeboats.  Push boats function somewhat as a small tug;
they push the skipjacks in and out of harbor, to and from the oystering
grounds, esp. during periods of light air.  The Caleb W. Jon is actually
the Caleb W. Jones, the last 2 letters were missing as were the
trailboards, the decorative "name plates", if you will, that appear on
these boats' bows.  

An excellent reference is "Chesapeake Bay skipjacks" by Pat Vojtech
(Tidewater Publishers, 1993, 145 pages, hardbound).  The one I got years
ago was $29.95, well worth it.  A copy for sale at Blackwater yesterday was
still going for that.  Hundreds of skpjacks were built, most very late in
the nineteenth or very early in the twentieth, centuries.  Back when there
were so many oysters one could harvest with some good "licks" hundreds of
bushels in an exceptional day.  Only a few skipjacks remain.  They're going
the way of the Black Rail.  

Of the ones still at Deal Island:  The Caleb W. Jones was built at
Reedville, VA, in 1953, the Somerset and City of Crisfield there in 1949. 
The Fannie L. Daugherty at Crisfield in 1904.  There are/were 2 Ida Mays,
don't know which is involved here, one built at Oxford, MD, in 1896, the
other at Deep Creek, VA, in 1906.  Most were built on the lower Eastern
Shore.  Vojtech lists them all and her color photographs are marvelous, but
not as much so as actually seeing these impressive craft, more properly
called bateaux, with their huge masts, big around as a phone pole but
higher.      

EGYPT ROAD.  Cambridge's Drang nach Suden.  Plans are afoot to build
hundreds of housing units along Egypt Road, now 7.4 miles of bucolic farm
fields with some woods and wetlands.  Home to scores of Grasshopper
Sparrows, the declining meadowlark, fields sometimes full of hundreds of
Tundra Swans and geese.  Source of a January Ruff record.  George saw a
Baird's Sandpiper there once.  Wires popular with kestrels.  Harriers
course over the fields.  Pipits and Horned Larks feed in the extensive open
areas.  Big flocks of Wild Turkeys sometimes.  Fields aflutter with
hundreds of sulphurs in summer.        

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



"U. S. scientists say they are told to alter findings" by Julie Cart, Times
Staff Writer.  I simply make notice of this without passing judgement. 
Please do not start a thread of related commentary as it is even more
inappropriate to do on this LISTSERV than my drawing attention to it in the
first place.  "Los Angeles Times" in their section The Nation, p. 1,
Thursday, February 10, 2005:   ... "more than 200 Fish and Wildlife
researchers cite cases where conclusions were reversed to weaken
protections and favor business, a survey finds... More than 200 scientists
employed by the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service say they have been directed
to alter official findings to lessen protections for plants and animals." 
The complete text of this article may be found by going into Google,
entering Advanced Search, and retrieving hits found that contain all these
words, in any order:  Julie, Cart, Scientists, Alter, Findings ... or other
similar combinations.