LXXVth (75th) Dorchester County, MD, May Bird Count, Sunday, May 8, 2005. 
Midnight - 9 P.M.  187 miles by car, 2 by foot.  LXXV sounds like it ought
to be a high-end, recent Ferrari model.  

Clear, 60 degrees at start falling into the high-mid 40s, rebounding to 75
by afternoon, then down to 62 at quitting time.  Winds N or NW all day,
10-15 m.p.h. until after sunrise then mostly 25-30 (35 sometimes) the rest
of the day until c. 6 P.M., when they dropped to 15 or less.  

One of the hardest May counts I've ever done.  The wind made landbirding
almost impossible, constantly roiling the vegetation, and making it hard to
hear anything.  Tides very high at night at Elliott Island (a quarter-mile
stretch completely submerged at 2 A.M. with 2 hours to go to full high
tide) and in the afternoon at Hooper's Island, low at Blackwater, then,
mercifully, low at Elliott in the late afternoon.  A cold night and
morning, an extremely windy day.  Wore 4 layers and gloves in the early
morning darkness and first couple of hours of daylight.  Drank over 2
quarts of coffee.

This year's theme:  Milestone, millstone, maelstrom.  MILESTONE, it WAS my
75th Dorchester May count; I've done 2 a year since 1970.  The first (first
weekend of May) count began in 1966 on a Friday.  All the others have been
on Saturdays except this year when I waited a day for the weather to
improve, which it didn't very much.  MILLSTONE, it IS a burden and a bit
oppressive (the anticipation, that is) to stay up all night and bird for 20
or 21 hours straight, but once it starts the dread fades and it becomes a
joy and is very satisfying when it is completed again for another year. 
MAELSTROM was this year's gale-force winds.

With no moon the stars showed up real well, including the Milky Way.  Only
2 meteors seen.  Combination of c. 35 turles, about evenly split between
Red-bellied & Painted.

128 hard-won species, one of my lowest lists ever. 

1 Least Bittern.  3 Blue-winged Teal (declining for years).  30
Green-winged Teal (most at Blackwater's Kuehnle Tract).  1 male Surf Scoter
(Hooper's Island).  2 Red-breasted Mergansers (Elliott from McCready's
Creek; females).  3 Ruddy Ducks (Fishing Bay at Elliott).  40 Bald Eagles. 
1 ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK (extremely late, a light-phase bird at Shorter's Wharf;
2 other years I've had singles in May, also at Shorter's, these all among
Maryland's latest-leaving spring birds ever).  Rails: 7 Clappers, 1 King,
19 Virginias, 0 Soras (have declined here for years), 0 Black Rails
(likewise; grant it the wind and cold made for a difficult night for
railing).  5 Common Moorhens.

17 shorebird speces (good for here):  45 Semipalmated Plovers.  5
Black-necked Stilts (Elliott Island).  2 oystercatchers, 7 Ruddy Turnstones
& 8 Sanderlings (on the sandbar at Tar Bay off of Hooper's I.).  125 Least
Sandpipers.  925 Dunlin.  2 woodcock.  5 terns (14 Caspians, 20 Royals, 1
Common, 45 Forster's, 6 Leasts).  1 Barn, 3 screech, 9 horned & 3 Barred
owls.  10 Chuck-will's-widows & 1 Whip-poor-will (few caprimulgids called
in the A.M. due to the cold).  

5 Pileated Woodpeckers.  4 Horned Larks (I never would have heard these,
the singing Myrtle Warblers, the Brown-headeds, and the Bobolinks without
my birding hearing aids).  5 swallow species (missed Cliff).  4
Brown-headed Nuthatches.  5 Yellow-breasted Chats.  5 Summer Tanagers.  2
Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrows.  18 Bobolinks (a small flight just after
sunrise with several singing males).  5 Baltimore Orioles (migrants).  

Missed:  bobwhite (in alarming decline here).  Wood Thrush.  gnatcatcher.  

Mammals:  2 Muskrats.  23 Sika Elk.  2 White-tailed Deer.  1 River Otter
(at Shorter's Marsh).  1 Virginia Opossum.  1 Gray Squirrel.  1 Eastern
Cottontail.  1 fox (heard).  

Froggies:  7 Carpenter, 4 Bull, 3 Green, and 2 Southern Leopard frogs. 
It's been drying out for a while.  This combined with the cold and the wind
I think discouraged the frogs from calling.  No Green Tree Frogs; they
often drown out the rails.

My thanks to Glenn Carowan of Blackwater for permission to enter restricted
areas.

"Rigby's Folly", Armistead property on Ferry Neck, Talbot County, MD, near
Bellevue.  Friday, May 6:  26 deer.  A Wild Turkey along the Easton bypass.
 

Saturday, May 7.  Mostly rested and read "Grail Bird."  1 White-throated
Sparrow.  1 White-eyed Vireo.  1 ad. Bald Eagle.  2 Common, 2 Forster's & 2
Least terns.  Also:  1 Mourning Cloak, 3 Spring Azures & 1 Tiger
Swallowtail.  4 Diamondback Terrapin.  Watched an Osprey divebomb a Great
Blue Heron at the head of the cove several times; the GBH was too near the
Osprey's nest.  The Osprey really made it squawk.  1 Gray Squirrel, 1
Eastern Cottontail & 1 Muskrat.  

Monday, May 9.  Basically got up and left to go to work in Philadelphia.. 
Today would have been the day for my May count.  2 Red-eyed Vireos and a
Wood Thursh in the yard (migrants).  First Blue Grosbeak for the yard this
year.     

Another highlight of last week:  Following a beautiful Lamborghini on the
way to work last Thursday.  From the rear its lines are quite stealthlike. 

2 new good books:  

"The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker by Tim
Gallagher (Houghton Mifflin, 2005, 272pp., $25.00).  Summarizes this
century's Ivory-billed reports and sightings, esp. recent Arkansas events. 
Thrilled as I am by all this news, this book and the recent search do seem
a bit Cornellcentric.  Still, we should all be grateful for everything
Cornell has done.  Gallagher and some others support former Princess Anne
resident, the late John Dennis, and his report of Ivory-billeds in Texas'
Big Thicket in 1966.  Dennis was unfairly ridiculed and scorned for making
these reports.  This syndrome continues.  Even now after 7 or more
sightings in Arkansas in the past year plus and Gallagher's book of
supporting evidence there is widespread skepticism.    

"Rare Bird: Pursuing the Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet" by Maria Mudd
Ruth (Rodale, to be published in June; 304pp., $23.95).  The last North
American bird species' nest to be discovered (1974; 1961 in the U.S.S.R.). 
I especially like some of their colloquial names:  buzz bomb, fog lark,
Australian bumblebee.  Who would have supposed a seabird would build
solitary nests over 100 feet up in huge trees in the Pacific Northwest and
only go to and from them in darkness? 

2 other recent Ivory-billed titles.  "The Race to Save the Lord God Bird"
by Phillip Hoose (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004).  I have this and it is
richly illustrated, especially good with the history of the Singer Tract. 
One I haven't seen but which should be very good is "In Search of the
Ivory-billed Woodpecker" by Jerome Jackson (Smithsonian Press, 2004). 
Jackson is a woodpecker expert, author of the Ivory-billed species account
fascicle of "Birds of North America", and has done a great deal of
searching for this species himself.

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