3 birding events in less than 24 hours.  Nothing really epic but taken
together ... a good time.

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

March 30, 2007, Friday.  6:30-8 P.M. only.  Has dried out a lot in the past
few weeks.  Easily able to drive across the field to Lucy Point.  Clear,
Calm, 62 degrees F.  Good situation for scoping the mouth of the Choptank
River.

44 Northern Gannets, all of them adults, several resting on the water, a
few plunge-diving.  The 3rd highest count for here.  Also:  1,125 Surf
Scoters, 630 Ruddy Ducks (up Irish Creek), 160 Buffleheads, 25 Horned
Grebes, 10 Common Loons, 3 Great Blue Herons, 40 Lesser Scaup.  Daffodils
and Hawthorns in full bloom.  2 Gray Squirrels.  No mice in the traps in
the house.  Good.

March 31, Saturday.  

Rigby.  A Great Norned Owl calling at 5:32 A.M.  An Eastern Cottontailed
Bunny Wabbit at 5:34, Peter Cottontail doing his Easter warmups.  Do them
circumspectly, P.C.  That horney owl, Old Bubo, would like to make a snack
out of you before s/he turns in for the day.  

Blackwater N.W.R.  11 of us on this mornings bird walk including Gordon
Jennings, Levin Willey & Jared Sparks.  Fair but a cool morning, 46-55
degrees F., cold NE breeze.  7:30-Noon.  56 species.  Tidal water levels
very low, imoundments continue to get lower.

AMERICAN WHITE PELICAN 9, at rest and in great, high, circling flight
(getting ready to blast off for Manitoba?).  In Pool 1:  1 Pied-billed
Grebe, 2 Wood Ducks, 4 Blue-winged Teal, 2 coots, 2 black ducks & 30
Ring-necked Ducks.  A female Common Merganser well seen from the end of the
observation spur road.  3 Great Egrets.  35 shovelers.  20 Green-winged
Teal.  A Cooper's Hawk in migration.  20 Bald Eagles.  80 Dunlin.  only 6
Forster's Terns.  20 Tree Swallows.  1 Brown-headed Nuthatch.  1 Marsh
Wren.  5 Pine Warblers.  6 meadowlarks.  10 Ospreys.  

Also:  1 Fox Squirrel.  1 Muskrat unconcerned and going about its business
a few feet below our vantage point on the dike.  We could hear the rasping
noise its teeth made on the marsh vegetation.  3 Red-bellied Sliders and 7
Painted Turtles braved the cool weather.  

Taylor's Island Family Campground.  Jared and I do a "seawatch" here 12:30
- 2:30.  Here the Chesapeake Bay is only about 6 miles across.  On a
clearer, calmer day than this, one would be able to easily see gannets and
loons at a distance of several miles through a good scope.  Today's results
make one wonder if this might be a good spot to do regular migration
watches, the narrow Bay concentrating birds on the move.  Why didn't this
occur to me 40 years ago?  Fair, winds NE 5-10 or more, sunny, temps in the
high 50s.

93 Northern Gannets, most of them flying S. down the Bay.  Only 4 of these
are sub-adults, the rest are gleaming white, full adults, knockouts.  My
guess is that this is a new high count for Dorchester County.

9 American Kestrels, these little falcons coming in off of the Bay, flying
into the NE wind, and disappearing up the Eastern Shore over land. 
Definitely a flight of these going on.

20 Common Loons, most of them in migration also.

Also:  49 Bonaparte's Gulls, also going up the Bay.

60 Surf Scoters.  4 Forster's Terns.  2 Red-breasted Mergansers.  8 Horned
Grebes.  47 Double-crested Cormorants, migrating north.  1 Greater
Yellowlegs, headed north.  3 Fish Crows.  3 adult Bald Eagles.  11
Buffleheads.  11 Herring, 6 Laughing & 2 Ring-billed gulls.  1 migrating
Sharp-shinned Hawk.  1 Barn & 8 Tree swallows, headed north.  1 Red-tailed
Hawk.  That's the complete list save for some ubiquitous Mallards hanging
around the campground.

In back of Best Value Inn E. of town on Rt. 50 there's a Question Mark
nectaring on a Bradford Pear. 

At Sailwinds Park in Cambridge a Cooper's Hawk flies right across Route 50,
low. 

Headin' home.  'tis the season.  Several huge tractors disking the fields
today with many hundreds of attendant Ring-billed Gulls following behind,
all in adult plumage.  With them, less than 1% of the gull total I'd guess,
are a few Laughing Gulls.

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 ....)