10th Dorchester County Fall Bird Count, grand totals, September 17, 2005.

A few days ago my posting summarized the findings of the South Dorchester
party of Diane Cole, Jared Sparks & myself.  The species total was
incorrectly indicated as 111.  I forgot to factor in the 2 Wood Ducks and
45 Least Sandpipers, so the correct total is 113.

I now have the lists from the 2 other parties.  We saw a grand total of 131
species.  I still need to double-check some of this but totals of interest
include:

224 Great Egrets.  0 pintails.  0 shovelers.  56 Bald Eagles.  2 Merlins. 
93 Killdeer.  42 Sanderlings.  2 Common Snipe (somewhat early).  226
Forster's Terns.  only 2 hummingbirds.  only 1 kingfisher.  0 Tree
Swallows.  73 Brown-headed Nuthatches.  7 thrashers.  13 warbler species,
with 36 Pine Warblers.  0 Field & 0 Song sparrows.  0 meadowlarks.  0
Boat-tailed & all of 1 Common grackle.  1 House Finch.  3 goldfinches.    

Levin & Diane Willey worked the Horn Point area in 2 installments and were
also present to see the dusk heron roost materialize at Blackwater, when
they counted 170 Great & 30 Snowy Egrets plus 6 Black-crowned Night Herons
and the count's only Pectoral Sandpipers (6).  Birds of interest they found
in the Horn Point area include a Cooper's Hawk, 12 bobwhite, the count's
only Barn Swallows (3) and a Palm Warbler.

Wayne Bell covered Taylor's Island as well as the Neck District west of
Cambridge.  Since there were no shorebirds spots or any hawk flight he
concentrated on finding and calling up mixed species foraging guilds (MSFG,
not to be confused with LSMFT = Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco).  In this
he was very successful, locating 2 Yellow-billed Cuckoos, 7 House Wrens, 44
Carolina Chickadees, 19 Tufted Titmice, a whopping 55 Brown-headed
Nuthatches, and 11 warbler species, including 19 Pine Warblers.

Wayne enclosed a dramatic color photograph taken the same day of an adult
Turkey Vulture perched on the blocky wooden cross of Bethlehem Church on
Taylor's Island.  This reminded me of an incident Col. Richard H.
Meinertzhagen vividly described ("Pirates and Predators: the Piratical and
Predatory Habits of Birds".  Oliver & Boyd, 1959, p. 134):

"The second episode occurred on Mount Sinai where I spent the night alone
in the small chapel on my fiftieth birthday.  It had snowed all night, I
had slept on the altar, but spent most of the night walking about to keep
warm.  Again from my diary:

I felt lonely and detached from the world, longing for the break of day. 
At last it came, first a faint blush of grey light in the east, rapidly
flooding with gold.  As I paced up and down in the snow the mist-soft
horizon slowly revealed itself, and I felt I was living in a wilderness of
spirits, lost and abandoned in the ghost-robe of dawn which enshrouded the
earth.  And when the sun rose over the deserts of Arabia the mist began to
clear, revealing a crystal-clear ruby blaze over the eastern skies, and I
looked down on one of the most beautiful sights I have ever witnessed; to
the east I could see the Gulf of Aqaba and on the west I could see parts of
the Gulf of Suez.  On this holy mountain I felt very near to God, I turned
to look at the chapel.  On the small wooded cross sat a lammergeier, all
hunched up in the cold but gloriously golden in the sunlight; and as I
watched him, but a few yards off, his great wings spread out and he sailed
forth into the gorges of those barren mountains searching for his
breakfast, as his kind have done since the days of Moses."

Meinertzhagen is notorious for having doctored some specimens of rare
Indian birds.  I can't help thinking he did this out of his impish sense of
humor.  Legendary in his time, and accorded numerous honors, such as the
Order of the British Empire, he had no need for further glory through
taking credit for rare bird specimens that weren't his.  The main incident
described in the book and movie "The Man Who Never Was", concerning a
highly-successful World War II intelligence gambit, was inspired by one of
Meinertzhagen's exploits in the Middle East in World War I. 

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