"Rigby's Folly", Armistead property on Ferry Neck, Talbot County, MD, near
Bellevue. 

SATURDAY, September 10, 2005.  Fair, 67-85, winds NNE5 - SW5 - light &
variable, low humidity, a gem.  Very dry.  Need a good soaker.  51 species.
 Not much of a flight today.  Spent 4 hours mowing, chain-sawing, trimming
bushes over the trails and driveway, etc.  

2 Great & 4 Snowy Egrets.  116 Mute Swans (enough already).  1 ad., 1 imm.
Bald Eagle.  1 Great Horned Owl (calling in the yard in the wee smalls then
seen c. 9 A.M.).  5 woodpecker species (no sapsucker or Red-headed).  1
Purple Martin & 1 Barn Swallow (only swallows all weekend).  38 Fish Crows.
 1 Veery.  3 Red-eyed Vireos.  6 warbler species: 1 parula, 1 Yellow, 1
Magnolia, 3 Black-and-whites, 6 redstarts & a yellowthroat.  1 ad. male
Baltimore Oriole.  Warblers and other neotrops just love the Black Locusts
here.     

Mammals:  1 Red fox.  2 Gray Squirrels.  1 Fox Squirrel (only 3rd property
record, on the driveway by the bend; I saw 1 on May 8, 1998; Jimmy
Olszewski saw 1 once.).  1 cottontail.  2 deer (a doe and 1 small fawn).  

Butterflies:  7 Monarchs.  5 Painted Ladies.  3 Red-spotted Purples.  1
Buckeye (very scarce this year).  7 sulphurs sp.  2 Pearlcrescents.  3
Silver-spotted Skippers.  Plus some very small blue jobs and dusky types I
do not know how to ID.  

1 female Box Turtle.  5 Diamondback Terrapin.  Ponds loaded with Green and
a few Bullfrogs.  4 Fowler's Toads.  The no-till soy beans, in contrast to
last year, are nice and high now, well above the knees.  Only a few
scattered Tick-seed Sunflowers.  Used to have big patches of them.  

SUNDAY, September 11.  Another beauty.  But fewer birds.  67-85, clear
becoming fair, winds light & variable.  47 species.  Less time spent today
at landscaping, less than 2 hours, more time walking and birding.  

1 ad. Bald Eagle.  2 Yellow-billed Cuckoos, 1 with a big grasshopper.  1
screech-owl (responded from Woods 8 at 10:30 A.M.).  6 swifts.  5
woodpecker species again.  1 pewee.  2 House Wrens (migrants).  1 Wood
Thrush (a migrant).  5 waxwings.  1 juvenile White-eyed Vireo.  3 Blue
Grosbeaks ( a family group).  2 Bobolinks.  2 cowbirds.  While cutting the
overhang on the driveway I found a fresh but unoccupied Chipping Sparrow
nest.  It was 5 feet high in a tangle of Greenbriar (Smilax).  

Mammals:  a Red Fox.  A doe and 2 separate fawns, one small, one
medium-sized but still with spots.  3 Gray Squirrels.  Butterflies:  as
yesterday but with several Cloudless Sulphurs and even more Painted Ladies
plus 8 Monarchs, a Tiger Swallowtail, a Viceroy, and a Cabbage White.  The
Silver-spotted Skippers and ladies along with various hymenoptera love the
Rose of Sharon Bushes.    

PILEATED WOODPECKER.  This male was working on a 3-foot long dead branch on
an otherwise healthy Sweet Gum.  I heard the slow, loud pecks and assumed
it was a Pileated.  Then I saw it.  In spite of my white boots and
out-sized, long-sleeved white shirt it allowed me to pass right underneath
it while it was c. 35 feet up directly overhead.  He continued working on
this branch for half an hour, excavating pits in it.  The branch was
somewhat horizontal so the bird had to hang on with its back nearly
parallel to the ground.  Strong bird.  

Pecks were delivered usually in sequences of 2-4 at a time, less frequently
one, even less frequently 5, at a rate of c. 4 per second at most.  The
pecks were audible at least 100 yards away, at which point the bird stopped
pecking.  Yesterday I heard him (same bird, I don't know?) drum twice. 
Today not once.  No calls either day.  So ... these big woodpeckers can be
cryptic.  All of this today is good practice for Arkansas, should I go.  

I'd like to add that some of the extreme skepticism about the Arkansas
situation sometimes reminds me a little bit of Kenneth Starr or "Les
Miserables'" Javert.  That said everyone will be relieved when there
finally is a definitive photograph or video.  Although a few, due to
jealousy and personality conflict, may actually be disappointed, or even
angry.  

OFF TOPIC AND OFF-THE-WALL (You have been warned):

The GREASER WEEKEND X FOWLER'S TOAD CONNECTION.  Listen sometime to the
chorus part of "Save the last dance for me" and some of the other hits of
the 50s and 60s and see if you don't think the choristers sound like a
bunch of Fowler's Toads.  They hold that one note for a long time just like
the toads do.  This is not to disparage the singers, be they batrachian or
human.  That was one of the best eras ever for popular music.  In addition
to the chorus there was often a falsetto part as well as an endlessly
repetitive, semi-idiotic 3-note piano in the background, Mr. Bassman, and,
of course, a cheesy saxophone solo and sometimes a spoken, recitative type
component as well as instrumental interludes.  There were no more than 3,
sometimes 4, of these components in any one song.  As a Fowler's Toad might
say: Let's go to the hop or at least do a hop.  WWWWAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH.  You
go toad!  

NEIGHBORS (for the most part) = noise.  True, I am spoiled having lived
much of my life with no one on the other side of the cove.  Now they're 5
households there.  Why do most of them have to shout and holler all the
time?  On Saturday evening 2 households combined for 3 labradors, all of
them barking a combined average of once a second.  At that rate that's just
shy of 10,000 barks for one small segment of the day.  Then suddenly there
is quiet but at 11 P.M. fireworks begin.  

Of course, I often wonder what they think of me, how I may offend them, the
quiet creep on the dock (locally called pier) who is always looking things
over with binoculars and telescope.  One time I did see a young couple
across the cove making, as Shakespeare said, the "two-backed beast", right
on their lawn and as au naturel as it gets.  But that was in my pre-Questar
days.

Contrast Saturdays noise with the arrival and anchoring c. 150 feet off the
end of our dock of the "My Gem an I" from the Chester River, a sizeable
catamaran.  The quiet couple had a black lab that was also subdued, not one
yelp or bark.  The man sat in the bow quietly reading, the wife stayed
below.  I hardly even knew they were there.  I wish they'd buy one of the 5
houses.  The light at the top of their mast blended in with the
constellations on this moonless evening in contrast to the lights blaring
away on some of the docks across the way.  Fortunately none of the various
jet skis were in use this weekend.  But then Sunday morning a siren goes
off and on 14 times at 8 A.M. over at Bellevue one supposes.  Does that
mean it's time to get ready for church (or else?).  Or is it, to quote the
Shaker again, "full of sound and fury signifying nothing."      

CONSEQUENCES.  More people = more traffic = more roadkills.  Recently I
found a roadkill Chuck-will's-widow and saw-whet owl.  More Box Turtles,
rabbits, and squirrels get killed.  There are times when batrachians swarm
over the roads.  When they do now they're going to get a pasting.  One
evening listening for chucks, which usually call at some distance, there
was so much continuous human noise I just gave up.  Herons seem adapted to
the disturbance.  This weekend I saw a couple of each of Green and Great
Blue herons, Great and Snowy egrets in the cove.  When waterfowl throng
Irish Creek most people do not go boating or use their docks so disturbance
to them isn't much.  There's a little more deer hunting now, which is good,
although one neighbor on the sly constructed several deer stands in our
woods.  New plantings and a bird feeder or 2 attract some birds to the
neighbors' yards.  Bluebirds and mockers like to perch on their TV
antennae.  To my delight Vultures sometimes perch on their chimneys.

HEADIN' HOME.  Most notable vanity plate:  NUVO RCH, on a Hummer.  

Car seen recently with 2 bumper stickers.  On the left:  "Come out, come
out, wherever you are."  On the right:  "A day without fairies is a day
without sunshine."

As I feel obliged to say every so often:  these postings serve as a diary
and are also sent to family and friends.  Forgive any excess of detail, off
topic or otherwise.
  
Best to all.-Harry Armistead, 523 E. Durham St., Philadelphia, PA
19119-1225.  215-248-4120.  Please, any off-list replies to: 
harryarmistead at hotmail dot com