With the help of a friend, I covered Irish Grove Sanctuary and Rumbly Point 
Road from dawn to dusk for the May count.  We spent most of the day in the 
canoe. Helped by the extremely high tides resulting from the strong 
southwest winds, we could go almost anywhere.

Perhaps because of the cold morning, birds continued to sing in the marshes 
nearly all day long. This resulted in counts of 51 clapper rails, 17 
Virginia rails, 27 willets, 71 marsh wrens, 137 common yellowthroats, 153 
seaside sparrows, and 104 red-winged blackbirds.  At about 3 PM we were 
canoeing up a small stream in the marsh when I heard the distinctive song 
of a sedge wren.  Tracking him down, I got to within 6 feet of him, to 
which he took umbrage, giving me a severe scolding.  There was at least one 
other male singing in the area.  The area did not look like good sedge wren 
breeding habitat, but they probably know better than I what constitutes a 
good site.

We had no migrants other than shorebirds, which included 14 semipalmated 
plovers, 11 greater yellowlegs,  2 lesser yellowlegs, 1 ruddy turnstone 
(flipping gravel at the boat ramp parking lot!), 35 semipalmated 
sandpipers, 40 least sandpipers, 420 dunlin, and 22 short-billed 
dowitchers. Herons were scarce with only 8 great blues, 3 great egrets, 5 
snowy egrets, and 2 green herons. Boat-tailed grackles have become very 
scarce also, with only 2 found in the marsh.

We had no goatsuckers, but did have 2 barn owls and a great horned owl 
calling after dark.

Perhaps the most pleasant surprise was to see northern bobwhites restored 
to their previous abundance.  They were singing everywhere around the 
house, and we flushed a covey of 9 birds right next to the house.   It's 
wonderful to see them running across the lawn, stopping occasionally to sing.

We saw a northern water snake, a huge black rat snake (>6'), green tree 
frogs, pickerel frogs, Fowler's toads, and heard bullfrogs calling from 
Rudy Hall's pond.  We found an old whiskey bottle that had a hatched clutch 
of snake eggs in it, and a bottle of Barry's Tricopherous, for the hair and 
skin.  We also found a new road that our new neighbor has cut into our 
woods from his property.

We ended up with 87 species and 1529 individuals.  We missed rock pigeon, 
European starling, house sparrow, robin, house finch, blue jay and other 
citified species that can't make it without human companionship and French 
fries, or that can't handle the mosquitoes, ticks and biting flies....  A 
complete list in Word format is available upon request.

Paul Bystrak
3709 Devonshire Drive
Salisbury, MD 21804