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Subject:

Taylor's Island, June 18

From:

Henry Armistead

Reply-To:

Henry Armistead

Date:

Sun, 19 Jun 2005 11:15:18 -0400

"Rigby's Folly", Armistead property on Ferry Neck, Talbot County, MD, near
Bellevue.  Arrive at 8:30 P.M., Friday.  8 deer.  Out in the cove are 4
pairs of Canada Geese with 12 medium-sized but still downy young.  The best
production of goslings I've ever seen in this area.  Each weekend there
seems to be a different configuration of adults and young.  Finshed 'The
Great Gatsby' before nodding off.  An O.K. read but don't understand why
it's considered such a great book.  The symbolism, I guess. 

Saturday.  Up at 2:30 A.M.  Have the grand slam at Denny's.  Fair and cool
with low humidity and little wind.  Temps in the 70s.  Delightful.  

TAYLOR'S ISLAND, Saturday, June 18.  Atlas work.

Taylor's Island CE.  5-11 A.M.  In this 6-hour period only 2 cars passed me
on the roads.  This sector includes Robinson Neck and Punch Island roads -
it is essentially southern Taylor's Island.  There is nice marsh (but
apparently without Seaside Sparrows and Marsh Wrens), woods (mostly
Loblolly Pine), fields largely fallow, bucolic houses and yards, and the
open Chesapeake Bay.  Lower Punch Island Road is RIGHT on the Bay, giving a
grand view of upper Hooper's Island, the Calvert Cliffs, the Cove Point
Light, and ... a splendid prospect onto the huge liquified natural gas
facility on the western shore.  In winter and early spring it's a great
place to look for bay ducks and gannets.  1000s of crab pots dot the
waters.

Most of Taylor's Island is still lovely and wild.  If a second Maryland Bay
bridge is ever built here that will be the end of this.  Quail are still
present in numbers like the old days.  Brown-headed Nuthatches seem to be
in every pine grove.  The nice thing about atlassing lower Dorchester
county (and doing breeding bird surveys) is that there are so many
write-ins and such variety it is almost like freelance birding.

67 species (38 by 6 A.M., 53 by 7 A.M.).  70 Double-crested Cormorants.  6
Bald Eagles.  2 Wild Turkeys.  8 quail.  3 Yellow-billed Cuckoos.  2
screech-owls (I flew across the road at 5 A.M.).  3 Chuck-will's-widows.  4
hummingbirds.  1 Hairy Woodpecker.  2 Red-eyed Vireos.  12 chickadees.  13
Brown-headed Nuthatches.  3 thrashers.  2 waxwings (finally safe as of June
15 but I'd submit many of them aren't really safe even then).  10 Pine
Warblers.  10 yellowthroats.  7 Blue Grosbeaks.  6 Indigo Buntings.  8
House Finches.

Also:  A Fox Squirrel in the yard at 3961 Punch Island Road.  1 Raccoon.  9
leopard and 3 Green Tree frogs.  2 Sika Elk.  6 rabbits.  A mockingbird on
lower Punch Island Rd. did these imitations:  Blue Jay, cardinal, crested
flycatcher, pewee, Semipalmated Plover (7 straight times), Red-headed
Woodpecker, bobwhite, Tree Swallow, Chuck-will's-widow, Orchard Oriole,
flicker & Royal Tern - several of these species missed today.  1 Cow-nosed
Ray.  Watched a cardinal fly-catching.

There's an extensive holding of The Nature Conservancy off the east side of
lower Robinson Neck Road, where an overgrown dirt road goes east for over a
mile into the boonies.  Someday I'll walk this but today the weeds were
thigh-high, no dubt loaded with ticks.

Taylor's Island NE.  4:45-5 A.M. & 11 A.M.-1 P.M  A very rich area with
much of the same habitats as the previous block plus wide Slaughter Creek,
more cultivated fields, a couple of marinas, a lot of woodsy Smithfield
Road, and a long stretch of Route 16, plus a nice prospect at Hooper Neck
Road out onto the Little Choptank River from Gators Cove looking towards
James Island's 2 rapidly-eroding segments.  58 species.

4 Bald Eagles.  1 female Common Goldeneye (disabled).  2 Black Vultures. 
20 Canada Geese.  30 Mallards.  4 quail.  3 Willets (at the extensive marsh
where 16 goes over Parsons Creek).  3 Chuck-will's-widows.  12 swifts.  1
Pileated Woodpecker.  1 Red-eyed Vireo.  6 Brown-headed Nuthatches.  1
waxwing.  6 Pine Warblers.  5 yellowthroats.  2 Field Sparrows.  1 male
Boat-tailed Grackle (Taylor's Island is their historically most northern
normal outpost on the Bay).                 

Also:  a mockingbird imitating a Virginia Rail (the
"kiddick-kiddick-kiddick" call).  1 Sika Elk.  1 Gray Squirrel.  Some
leopard frogs.  2 White-tailed Deer.  

Headin' home.  A Cooper's Hawk just south of the Delaware-Chesapeake Canal
seen from Route 1 in Delaware.  Liz and I and Joan Menocal went to the
movie "Crash" at Plymouth Meeting Mall.  Cooper's Hawk over Dixon's Farm on
Stenton Avenue on the way there.  Dixon, a former owner of the 76ers, used
to carpool with my brother, Gordon, to the Meadowbrook School.  That would
have been c. 1940.  Tempus fugit.  Time flies like an arrow.  Fruit flies
like a banana.   
 
DOES WHITE CLOTHING GIVE BIRDS PAUSE?  One keeps hearing this.  Today I had
on a broad-brimmed white hat and a way-oversized gleaming white,
long-sleeved shirt (when loose goes almost to the knees), both intended to
protect from the sun.  I've had 2 melanomas.  The outsized shirt also lets
air in and out, swishes around to frustrate invertebrates that like to suck
one's blood.  Nevertheless, this morning I had some of the best
spishing/screech-owling sessions ever.  Brought in the day's only
gnatcatcher and Worm-eating warbler.  Several times I thought Brown-headed
Nuthatchers and chickadees were going to take me out, swooping down to
within 2 or 3 feet of my head.    

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