Rigby's Folly, Armistead property on Ferry Neck, Talbot County, MD, 25124
West Ferry Neck Road near Royal Oak but nearer still to Bellevue. 

Only mentioned in some iterations of my previous posting:  daughter, Mary
and 2 of her friends saw 3 River Otters here on Saturday, July 22.

SATURDAY, JULY 29, 2006.  Fair, winds SW 5, 80-91 degrees F., very low
tide.  A summer gem.

2 Snowy & 1 Great egret.  1 Great Horned Owl flushed from the Beach Trail
at 3:45 P.M., great view with the sun behind me & fortunately no harassing
American Crows got onto old Bubo.  78 Fish Crows.  only 20 Mute Swans, the
2 cygnets hatched at the head of the cove are now bigger than Mallards. 
all of 1 Common Grackle.  1 Orchard Oriole.  

A better day really for non-avian taxa, esp. butterflies.

Butterflies:  16 species (probably a record, such as it is, for the
property):  3 Red-spotted Purples.  3 Tiger & 1 Spicebush swallowtail.  5
Pearlcrescents.  12 American & 1 Painted Lady.  30 Cabbage Whites.  5
Monarchs.  3 Cloudless & 1 Clouded sulphur.  1 Question Mark.  2 Common
Wood Nymphs.  1 Eastern Tailed Blue.  3 Buckeyes.  10 Silver-spotted
Skippers.  1 unidentified small (folded-wing) skipper.  

Dragonflies (which I know even less than butterflies).  9 Common
White-tails; they like to hang along the driveway.  3 bluets (sp.?); they
like the cove's surface and Spartina alterniflora).  Several large darners
which did not look green.

Herptiles:  54 Diamondback Terrapin (12 in the cove, 42 seen from Lucy
Point).   2 Five-lined Skinks: 1 8" (Big Daddy), 1 3" (Junior; where was
Big Momma and L'il Sis?), these on the front porch.  A 24" Eastern Garter
Snake, common over much of the East but I hardly ever see them here; this
one was basking in the sun outside of the garage and retreated inside there
through a crack when I tried to catch it.  It was, for a garter snake, fat
(El Gordo).  Green, Bull & Southern Leopard frogs in The Pond.  Loads of
very small Fowler's Toads in many places, varying from the size of small
peas to small lima beans.  

Mammals:  1 Red Fox.  2 Gray Squirrels.  2 mice in the house traps.  A doe,
a small spike buck, and 2 fawns, the latter feeding on corn leaves close to
us.

The fireflies this evening are the best I've seen all year.  Not hundreds
but dozens, lending their magic, tentative, weaving presence to the dusk. 
Nothing like a little bioluminescence to pick up the spirits.

"Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her sacred bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign."

Thomas Gray.  'Elegy written in a country churchyard'.  You said it, Tom!

Glorious, high summer weather, hot to be sure, but the humidity still low. 
Sunny with puffy clouds.  Vegetation still lush and green.  I predict it
will take a hit in this coming week's heat wave, unless it does rain.  Such
spendid summer times remind me of sections of 2 books by authors from
families of Russian emigres.  "Speak, memory" by Vladimir Nabokov and
"Russian blood" by my schoolmate Alexander Shoumatoff.  Mostly these
concentrate on other topics, such as the effects of the Russian Revolution
and other minor irritations on these 2 upper class families.  But both
authors are deeply interested in butterflies.  The Russian summer in the
St. Petersburg area and northwest Russia must be idyllic.  Shoumatoff
writes of his family's summer place: tennis, fishing, parties, butterflies
... "day after golden day."  This further reminds me of another book:
"Leisure, the basis of culture."  While not exactly a gentleman of leisure,
wealthy Walter Rothschild was obsessed with butterflies and many other
interests and had dozens of procurers in many parts of the world who sent
him butterflies they collected locally as recounted in "Dear Lord
Rothschild" by Miriam Rothschild [an authority on fleas] (ISI Press, 1983,
398 pp.).    

SUNDAY, JULY 30.  Fair, winds NW 5+ m.p.h, 80-95 degrees F.  

An immature male Cooper's Hawk chaperoned by 2 Eastern Kingbirds at 2:45
P.M., making my walk in 95 degree temperatures well worthwhile.  I mean,
those kingbirds were really riding herd.  Every few years I see an "early"
Cooper's in July or early August with recent sightings of such at Deal
Island, Hooper's Island, Elliott Island, and here.  On July 31, 1996, I saw
another imm. male being chased by a kingbird at Rigby.  Amazingly enough on
our drive home today we see a Cooper's fly right across Stenton Avenue near
where Ivy Hill Road crosses Stenton Avenue, at 7:25 P.M., in Philadelphia. 

Liz sees an imm. Bald Eagle.  1 Spotted Sandpiper.  A recently fledged
Downy Woodpecker.  3 Red-tailed Hawks.  3 Black Vultures.  Raptors, gulls,
swifts, and swallows are conspicuously aloft today, taking advantage of the
nice NW breeze.  

On the way home.  McMallards: a hen Mallard with 5 or so small ducklings in
the McDonalds pond at Easton.  3 Wild Turkeys on the W side of Rt. 309 a
couple of miles N of Easton & just S of Three Bridges Branch Road.

Butterflies are good today also although we don't hunt for them as much. 
26 American Ladies.  1 Gray Hairstreak.  We see all the species we saw
yesterday except Question Mark, Common Wood Nymph, and Painted Lady.  There
are 3 species of small (folded-wing) skippers on our Rose of Sharon bushes
we do not identify plus Silver-spotted Skippers and Pearlcrescents on these
bushes.  Sometime I'm going to have to bear down on skipper ID.   

Corrigenda to my posting for July 22-24.  I meant to indicate Route 363 as
the road to Deal I., not Route 413, which is the road to Crisfield.  John
Weske et al. banded 105 (not 200) Royal Terns at Reedy Island in N Ocean
City, MD, on July 11.  John et al. banded 200 (not 205) Royals at Wreck I.,
VA, on July 18.  

IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER SEARCH.  Back in March I posted my long report on
my 2 weeks in Arkansas last winter ... without paragraphs Cornell asked to
be supressed.  The missing paragraphs (perhaps no more than 5% of the total
report) relate mostly to search techniques and methodology but I understand
it is now O.K. to release that information.  I did not see or hear an IBWO
but several people I know heard the double knock or rap.  If anyone would
like my complete report please reply offline to: 
  The report does not have information on what
others heard or saw.

Best to all.-Henry ("Harry") T. Armistead, 523 E. Durham St., Philadelphia,
PA 19119-1225.  215-248-4120.  Please, any off-list replies to: 
harryarmistead at hotmail dot com  (never, please, to 74077.3176 ....)