Dotty Mumford, Marylee Ross and I were at Irish Grove Sanctuary (Somerset 
Co) most of  the day on Saturday.  Saturday started at midnight.  Marylee 
and I put the canoe in at about 11PM on Friday night and paddled out into 
the marsh.  With a full moon and a high tide, and an MP3 player with self 
powered speakers, we hoped to get a better idea of the rail species in the 
marshes. However, by 11:30 it became obvious that there were thunderstorms 
on the way.  We could see them on the horizon, but couldn't hear them.  I 
called my daughter-in-law on the cell phone and she checked the radar, 
informing us that the storms were indeed headed for our location.  We kept 
going for a while, getting maybe a mile or so from the launch site, but the 
storms became audible, the moon was blacked out by the advancing clouds, 
and we could feel the cold air outflow, so, about 12:30 we were racing back 
ahead of the storms, arriving back at the truck just in time.  We had only 
3 species in those 2 hours, clapper rail, great blue heron, and black duck. 
There was no response to the recordings of Virginia rail, king rail, black 
rail, sora, or yellow rail.

On Saturday, we did some maintenance work and some birding in the area, 
with the following results:
Northern Gannet - 4+ (over Pocomoke Sound, Viewed from end of Rumbly Point 
Road)
Double-crested Cormorant - 8
Great Blue Heron - 3
Great Egret - 2
Snowy Egret - 5
Black Vulture - 2
Turkey Vulture - 10
Canada Goose - 2
Wood Duck - 1 (unusual bird for salt marshes)
Am. Black Duck - 12
Surf Scoter - 12
Osprey - 1 (bombing an imm. bald eagle on top of a tree)
Bald Eagle - 2 (imm)
No. Harrier - 2
Red-tailed Hawk - 1
Wild Turkey - 1
Clapper Rail - 45
Virginia Rail - 6 (only found along the edge of the woods)
Greater Yellowlegs - 16
Lesser Yellowlegs - 7
Willet - 10
Dunlin - 475
Laughing Gull - 26
Ring-billed Gull - 2
Herring Gull - 2
Great Black-backed Gull - 6
Caspian Tern - 1
Forster's Tern - 13
Mourning Dove - 3
Red-bellied Woodpecker - 2
Downy Woodpecker - 1
Yellow-shafted Flicker - 1
Pileated Woodpecker - 3 (watched a pair flaking bark from a dead pine - 
amazing how quickly they can strip a tree)
Blue Jay - 1
American Crow - 3
Fish Crow - 2
Tree Swallow - 18
Barn Swallow -20
Carolina Chickadee - 6
Brown-headed Nuthatch - 2
Carolina Wren - 8
House Wren - 5
Marsh Wren - 14
Ruby-crowned Kinglet - 1
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher - 8
Eastern Bluebird - 2
American Robin - 2
Northern Mockingbird - 1
Brown Thrasher -1
European Starling - 2
Myrtle Warbler - 8
Yellow-throated Warbler - 1
Pine Warbler - 21
Prairie Warbler - 2
Ovenbird - 5
Common Yellowthroat - 9
Eastern Towhee - 2
Chipping Sparrow - 6
Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrow - 6
Seaside Sparrow - 35+ (Dotty said they arrived on the 12th)
Song Sparrow - 5
Swamp Sparrow - 1
White-throated Sparrow - 6
No. Cardinal - 7
Red-winged Blackbird - 16
E. Meadowlark - 9
Boat-tailed Grackle - 1
Brown-headed Cowbird - 4
Am. Goldfinch - 1

We all left about 3:30 PM.
Paul Bystrak

3709 Devonshire Drive
Salisbury, MD 21804
410-572-9950
443-783-1268 (cell)