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

What promised to be a dull, hot, humid weekend without any passerine flight
(which is what I REALLY hope for at this time of year) proved to be all of
that, except dull, with 2 new property high counts., and other minor
triumphs (and failings, too).

Friday, September 7, 2007.  A Woodchuck d.o.r. at Cordova.  Requiescat in
pavement.  A fawn, 2 does, and 1 rabbit at Rigby.

Saturday, September 8.  Fair, 74-87, winds SW 10+.  A day with zero
warblers, flycatchers, grosbeaks, buntings, orioles, vireos, woodpeckers,
Bobolinks, or tanagers.  I've seen no numbers of Bobolinks anywhere this
fall so far.

Spent all morning doing e-mail and errands in St. Michaels.

17 cardinals, 15 of them flushed as I motor up the driveway.  21 Killdeer,
all foraging in Fields 1 (8) & 2 (13), which have been very open and bare
for weeks but with struggling young soy beans; good Buff-breasted Sandpiper
habitat.  An adult male Peregrine Falcon zooming behind Michael Davidson's
house and on to the south, only the 8th property record, previous early
date: September 14.  189 Fish Crows going to roost at dusk.  80
Green-winged Teal in late afternoon in strong southbound migration; former
yard high was 45 on March 25, 2007.  

Also:  3 Snowy & 2 Great egrets, 1 kestrel, 1 Sharp-shinned Hawk,  1 Royal
Tern, 1 female kingfisher, 20 robins, 6 Ospreys (starting to decline as
some head out to the south), an adult Bald Eagle, and 1 Yellow-billed
Cuckoo.   

Non-avian taxa:  2 rabbits.  21 deer in Field 4 simultaneously, with 3
fawns & 2 small bucks (incl. the leucistic one).  2 Gray Squirrels which
have left small middens of Black Walnut nut renderings all around the lawn,
and on the front porch.  Froggies:  34 (mostly Green Frogs) in The Pond, 7
in the Varmint Pool, and none in the Waterthrush Pond.  Butterflies:  3
Hackberry Emperors, 3 Monarchs, 7 Pearlcrescents, 2 Cloudless Sulphurs, a
Cabbage White, 4 Red Admirals, a Spicebush Swallowtail (chased by one of
the Hackberry Emperors, about a quarters its size; now THAT is
interspecific aggression).  Lizard du jour, as usual the Five-lined Skink,
handsome little creatures, a 7 incher and a 5 incher on the front porch.  A
female Box Turtle in Field 7 shambling along next to the grasses on the
Bay's edge. 

Jimmy, Tom, and Bruce Olszewski are here tending to the Clover Field, which
John Camper is disking.
 
Also: an imm. Bald Eagle over John Swaine's fields.

Sunday, September 9, a day of mixed events.

Fair to mostly cloudy, 72-85, winds S 0-5 becoming NW at 10+.

SOME passerines along the Olszewski trails:  a gnatcatcher, a Veery, an
adult male Pine Warbler, a Red-eyed Vireo, a Pileated Woodpecker foraging,
a female redstart, and 8 Tufted Titmice (ties 2nd highest count; we've had
9 on 3 occasions; almost all earlier highs have been in August &
September).  Lake Olszewski is dry.  1 Cooper's Hawk in migration.  

Butterflies: the usual suspects plus, missed yesterday, 2 Common Wood
Nymphs.  2 small fawns, smaller than the ones seen yesterday.  4 rabbits, 3
squirrels.

Previously I have written about our tiny, "green", boat launching ramp.  It
is about to become less green after a close, $1,100 encounter with a
Persimmon, that the Persimmon took exception to.  A Poison Ivy vine on the
Persimmon caught the front of the car while I was concentrating on
positioning the boat trailer.  But: 

Boat trip of 15.0 statute miles to Cook's Point "Island" and back, water
temperature 77-79 degrees F.  12:40-3 P.M.  Tide high and rising.    Am on
Cook's Point Island 1:10-2:30 P.M.  Go over my knees once in very soft
marsh mud/water.  Later when some of this slips out of the boots onto the
boat deck I am struck by how much it looks like lubricating oil in need of
changing.

34 Common Terns (migrating in one group), 3 Forster's Terns, 4 Bald Eagles,
1 Brown Pelican, 3 Least Sandpipers (tame, foraging at close range on top
of the sod bank), 20 starlings, 4 Ospreys, 41 Herring, 2 Great Black-backed
& 10 Laughing Gulls, 1 Great Blue & 1 Green heron, and 25 cormorants.  But
I got the biggest kick out of a juvenile Seaside Sparrow, perhaps a migrant
as there is no extensive saltmarsh here or nearby.

This 4 or 5-acre area has only been an island for a few years, and will
wash away in a few more.  But for the moment it is a lovely place with nice
saltmarsh that has Spartina alterniflora & Spartina patens, a few Joe-pye
Weeds, extensive Phragmites on the north side, some Salicornia, a few
bayberry bushes, and various trees on the NE side:  10 Loblolly Pines,
Black Locusts, Black Cherries, a few small oaks, Baccharis halimifolia, and
Iva frutescens.  I didn't notice any Distichlis spicata today.

Lots of grasshoppers, 2 Monarchs, and 5 skippers (right on the saltmarsh
vegetation, brown and dirty white with dark veins on the underwings,
doesn't really correspond to Saltmarsh Skipper. ??).  Large, creepy,
long-legged brown spiders under the driftwood planks, a few dead Horseshore
Crabs, and remains of some Fiddler Crabs.  1000s of Periwinkles.

Headin' home, a process.

Before starting dispense 5 pounds of corn kernels at several spots for the
Gray Squirrels, especially the "yard 'poos" that favor us with their antics
as seen from the porches or from inside of the house even.  Yesterday the
Olszewskis gave us a 100 lb bag.  A lot of what remains I plan to feed this
coming winter to the Cambridge Canvasbacks (sounds like minor league
baseball, or high school football).

Stop 1, at the bend of the driveway to retrieve a "Clam Line" orange and
white, cylindrical float at Lucy Point.  It is damaged at one end, snug
against our shoreline earlier, but I now have to wade out 200 feet, up to
my waist, to get it and add it to a small collection of marine realia and
objets, such as the rusty metal clam bucket I found at Hooper's Island last
year, wooden handles of old oyster tongs, large plastic baskets for holding
fish, and the like.

Stop 2, on the driveway at Field 4, where 17 Wild Turkeys are foraging,
none of them a grown tom.  Previous high count: 10.

Stop 3, look at 3 bucks in a group in the Campers' fields, 7, 4 and 2
points respectively, the 7-pointer a really impressive, noble beast.  They
are with 6 does.

Going up routes 309, 481 & 301 there are magnificent skyscapes, such as
might have inspired Albert Bierstadt or Maxfield Parrish, or, for that
matter, natural history artist Francis Lee Jaques (pronounced Jay Qeez),
the latter famous for saying: "There is little difference between warblers
and no warblers."  Jaques focused on heroic scenery and large birds and
animals, merely tolerated the dickey birds.  

Today there are heroic, complex cloudscapes accented by a few open areas of
bright blue sky, occasional rays of sun, and scattered, tantalizingly local
showers, some of them heavy but over too soon.  The grip of the drought
continues, especially on Ferry Neck, responsible at Rigby for the death of
some medium-sized oaks, Loblolly Pines, Black Gum, and, surprisingly, a lot
of the Blackberries as well as the absence, for months, of Fowlers Toads,
which I hope are sleeping tight through their well-earned aestivations. 
May they emerge and inform moist, warm spring evenings with their hoarse,
monotone songs next year.  Go toads!, but ... later.

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 ....)