Sunday, March 9, 2008:  

ON THE WAY DOWN.  little pond 0.3 mi. N. of Routes 481 X 309: , 2 female &
1 male Hooded Merganser, 2 Green-winged Teal & 6 Tundra Swans.  a Horned
Lark & 2 kestrels nearby.  

Bellevue Road:  61 Wild Turkeys in field across from John Swaine's.  Some
are back in the woods = hard to get a complete count.

RIGBY'S FOLLY, Armistead property on Ferry Neck, Talbot County, MD, West
Ferry Neck Road near Royal Oak but nearer still to Bellevue.  P.M. only. 
clear, wind NW 20+ becoming < 10 m.p.h., 48-44 degrees F., tide low. 
visibility excellent, sliver of a crescent moon - a 2-days-old new moon:

In the Big Field:  310 Canada Geese, 2 Mallards, 4 Killdeer, 2 bluebirds &
10 robins plus 19 deer including 3 small bucks.  Nothing in the other
fields.  Often there ARE no birds in any of the fields.  Hunting season
long over, the geese are tame, do not fly as I drive by at close range.

Also: an ad. Bald Eagle, 5 Horned Grebes, 12 Red-breasted Mergansers, and 2
wigeon flying over Field 4.  1 Brown Thrasher.  6 Tundra Swans.  2 Great
Blue Herons.   1 calling Mourning Dove.  

The tight waterfowl flock found last weekend is still out there actively
feeding on SAV, numbering about 135 scaup & wigeon combined with a few
Canvasbacks.  It is farther out and w/o my scope I'm unable to see if the
Redheads are still there.

The hedgerow along the stretch of the driveway on the S. side of Field 4,
c. 0.2 of a mile long, is penetrated by 15 discrete deer trails, only a few
of them not actively used.  The fields are starting to green up nicely, are
almost like lawn.  

Found a nice left antler in the NW corner of field 4 just lying there out
in the open.  Of the 12 or so shed antlers I've ever found this is the
biggest, though not huge.  Its 5 tines measure 6, 6, 1.75, 6 and 5 inches. 
 

c. 2" of rain yesterday with c. 50 m.p.h. winds.  Ponds & ditches are full.
 No blowover live trees.  For the first time in a year the Olszewski Trails
are largely submerged & Lake Olszewski is full.

11 traps in the kitchen but no mice, although 1 of the traps is sprung.

Monday, March 10:

Cambridge.  House Sparrows active at the Wawa at 5:37 A.M. DST.

TAYLOR'S ISLAND.  a MOST rewarding day.  80 species, much more than I
expected, 17 of them waterfowl.  This is the first time I've spent an
entire day on Taylor's Island.

6:15 A.M. - 8 P.M. DST.  38.5 miles by car, 2 by foot.  clear to fair to
overcast but ending as fair.  winds calm for the 1st few hours, wind
building from the S 5-15-20 m.p.h. but mostly strong from 11 A.M. on. 
30-45 degrees F.  Tide EXTREMELY low, esp. in the A.M., the high afternoon
tide being at the level of a normal low tide.  Lots of exposed bottom and
mud.  Basically a cold, breezy day.  Today's strong S. winds, although
cold, brought birds.

Of interest:  1 Northern Bobwhite.  Gives its morning/evening call once,
easily imitated, which I do, and am pleased, and surprised, to have it
answer me, twice.  I think this is transcribed in Sibley as "poi kee," a
covey call, the 1st part rises, the 2nd part is shorter, and higher than
the 1st.  Called from what seemed a perfect woodcock field, but ... no
timberdoodle.

515 Mallards (the national bird of Dorchester County is not the mosquito;
it's the pen-raised Mallard).  only 2 Mute Swans.  410 Lesser (mostly) and
a few Greater scaup.  1 male Ruddy Duck.  only 4 Great Blue Herons.  1
Clapper & 3 Virginia rails.  2 screech & 3 horned owls.  6 Brown-headed
Nuthatches.   32 bluebirds.  5 Hermit Thrushes.  1 Fox Sparrow.  16 House
Sparrows.  7 Common Loons close in, not part of the flight, 2 of them with
Hogchokers.

RAPTORS:  a definite raptor flight - 25 Black Vultures (including a kettle
of 19).  36 Turkey Vultures.  14 Bald Eagles.  1 Northern Harrier (a gray
ghost).  3 Sharp-shinned Hawks.  1 Cooper's Hawk.  3 imm. Red-shouldered
Hawks.  14 Red-tailed Hawks (incl. a kettle of 7).  1 Osprey (they return
later to the big open areas of the Chesapeake per se than to the rivers and
creeks farther away from the Bay proper).  0 falcons.  As with many other
areas where raptors migrate, not always possible to tell today if the
vultures and eagles are actually migrating.  "How DO you know you're not
counting the same ones?"

SPRING SONG.  Of today's 80 species all are already on the checklist I use
for the Christmas Bird Counts, except Osprey.  However, there ARE
nonetheless big signs of spring today with numbers of birds singing (or
otherwise calling, vocalizing, drumming on wood, etc.).  To wit:  

1 Mourning Dove calling, 4 Downy Woodpeckers (drumming), 1 flicker
(calling), 6 titmice, 3 Carolina Wrens, 9 bluebirds, 2 robins, 2 starlings
(upright on the wires with "rowing" wings & producing the usual grotesque
utterances - THAT is supposed to attract a mate?!), 13 Pine Warblers, 2
Song Sparrows, 3 cardinals, 9 Red-winged Blackbirds, 1 meadowlark, 1
cowbird, and 1 House Finch.  That's some pretty good sound for a March 10. 
Good day to have the hearing aids cranked up high.  Surprised not to hear
any chickadee or White-throated Sparrow song.  

At the St. John Creek bridge 13 male Red-winged Blackbirds in sight
simultaneously are perched on upright vegetation, seemingly on territory. 
This is also where I have an unpleasant encounter with a local landowner. 
It is not good when the alpha male in the pickup truck roars past and does
not return your wave.  It gets worse when he turns around, stops, and his
first words are: "Who are you, where are you from, and what are you doing?"
 I am on a public road, minding my own business.  And ... good morning to
you, too.     

AFTERNOON FLIGHT UP THE BAY.  Spend an hour in the A.M., 3 hours in the
P.M., doing an intense "sea watch" from the shore of Taylor's Island Family
Campground.  But first I buy food & drink in their store and get the O.K.
from the 2 friendly ladies behind the counter.  

At this point the Bay is quite narrow, about 7 miles across, so there seems
to be some tendency for waterbirds to become concentrated, funneled
somewhat, during migration.  To the S. the Cove Point Light, which looks
quite like the one on Ocracoke Island, is easily visible.  48 Northern
Gannets are seen in the A.M., flying down the Bay into the wind, but few in
the P.M..  In the afternoon there are:

240 Canada Geese (flocks of 90, 70 & 80).  305 Surf Scoters.  1
White-winged Scoter.  180 Long-tailed Ducks.  45 Buffleheads.  6 Common
Goldeneyes.  3 Red-breasted Mergansers.  7 Red-throated & 44 Common loons. 
12 Horned Grebes.  1 immature Brown Pelican.  1 Great Blue Heron.  37
Bonaparte's Gulls.  11 Forster's Terns.  I'm not surprised to see no
Laughing Gulls or cormorants.

TUNDRA SWAN FLIGHT.  1,208 total in the afternoon Bay flight with flocks of
circa 55, 35, 25, 150, 135, 35, 40, 3, 120, 105, 45, 175, 100, 35, 30, 75 &
45.  The flock of 45 came at last light but were still easily visible under
the crescent moon.  These splendid birds deserve a paragraph or two of
their own, a tribute.
 
Approaching flocks today come generally from the direction of
8-mile-distant Barren Island and are themselves visible several miles away.
 Most pass directly overhead.  As the colossal white birds go by it's hard
not to choke up a little at their beauty, both of sight and sound, even if
you've been in the presence of a thousand flocks before, which I have, and
then some.  

Late in the day with the sun just over the western shore horizon the swans
become lit up, roseate.  Pushed along by the 15-knot wind, they're doing 70
easy, headed on their great run to the Far North, to places with names such
as Ellesmere Island, Yukon, Nunavut, North Slope, District of Keewatin. 
They've already survived a winter, and a gunning season in North Carolina,
not to mention a long flight south.  

Their species has also survived, almost 40 years now, the massive die-off
around 1970 of their favorite winter food: the Chesapeake's submerged
aquatic vegetation.  Many of them then moved to North Carolina to winter
and also adapted by going to winter fields to forage.  

Ahead of them, now, in the darkness, lie myriad communication towers,
countless aircraft, and a complex, ever-increasing morass of cables and
wires, and, ultimately, the vicissitudes of a high Arctic summer.

Their calls are one of the most affecting sounds I know, easily heard over
the keening of the strong winds in the big pines behind me, the roar of the
waves crashing against the riprap.  It makes for a sort of celestial
woodwind chorus.  Really.  

Prokofiev may even have heard it.  Didn't he choose the oboe to represent
the waterfowl (admittedly, a duck) in "Peter and the Wolf?"  Such an astute
and discerning writer as Tom Horton devoted an entire book as a paean to
the flights of Tundra Swans.  I bet he's seen flocks over a thousand times,
too.

It will be a long time until they return, well into November.  One day in
that month we once saw more than 3,000 pass over Kiptopeke.  At Rigby's
Folly my best autumn count was 2,715 on November 5, 1995.  I estimated
3,130 headed north on March 20, 1999, late for such a big flight.  

In the dining room at Rigby hangs a big oil painting done by my grandfather
and namesake, Henry Tucker, in the 1930s.  It shows a flock of Tundra Swans
laboriously winging their way along a shoreline with big, crashing waves
against an ominous, dark gray sky - what has to be a November storm.       
    
 
MAMMALS:  1 Fox & 4 Gray Squirrels, 1 Eastern Cottontail & 1 Sika Elk buck
at 8 P.M. with the biggest rack I've seen in this species.

HERPS:  3 Chorus Frogs calling.  10 Painted Turtles sunning on the E. bank
of the little pond on the way in & N. of the driveway to Taylor's Island
Family Campground.

Favorite sign seen today, reading from top to bottom:  "private property,
no hunting, no trespassing, by owner."  Evidently a well-behaved owner.   

BIG SHIPS.  Several hours of energetic telescope use reveals only a few
craft on the water.  A barge.  A workboat.  A small power boat.  One
sailboat.  the freighter "Falcon" headed down the Bay into the wind, in
sight for over 2 hours so slow is its passage.  A big container ship: "CSAV
Rio Lontue" with huge letters on its hull: UCC.  A small freighter "Ocean
Victory", from its apperance a pyrrhic one, also laboring into the wind.

DORCHESTER COUNTY WINTER TRILOGY.  Today marks the last part of what might
be called a Dorchester County winter trilogy - 3 visits each lasting the
entire daylight period to 3 places, the previous 2: January 27 at Elliott
Island Road & February 16 at Hooper's Island. 

BLACKWATER N.W.R. IN THE NEWS.  Good article in the Philadelphia
"Inquirer," Sunday, March 9, 2008, pages  N1 and 4 (the Travel section)
with 5 color photographs and a color map.  "Wet 'n wild: Bald Eagles lead
the avian parade at Maryland's Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge - 27,000
teeming acres known as "the Everglades of the North." "  Quotes refuge
biologist Dixie Birch.  One of the photographs, of Osprey chicks, is by
MDOSPREY subscriber Melanie Lynch, the IT Editor of "Chesapeake Bay
Magazine."  Generally accurate as far as I can tell but probably overstates
the rates of erosion and sea level rise, which, nonetheless seem to be very
alarming.

RED KNOT EDITORIAL.  The Philadelphia "Inquirer", March 10, laments the
continued reluctance of legislators and agencies to help the Red Knot, and
the Horseshoe Crabs: "Save the Red Knot."  "The New Jersey Marine Fisheries
Council - whose membership is dominated by fishing industry representatives
- has refused to extend the ban beyond another a [sic] year."  (the NJ ban
on harvesting the crabs).  I am sure "the state's 38 crab harvesters" are
pleased.  It's the 3rd editorial, p. A14.  

BIRD ART BOOK REMAINDERED.  Cook, Katrina.  Birds.  Quercus.  2007.  223p. 
hb.  1.125" X 14.25" X 17.25".  6.5 lbs.  I paid $20 U.S. at Border's,
Philadelphia, 3/7/08, lists at L50 U.K.  ART.

I found copies of this in Border's last week.  As is evident from my
catalog entry above it weighs over 6 lbs. and is c. 1 X 14 X 17 inches. 
Has, usually, 1-3 examples of art by such greats as Thorburn, Liljefors,
Peter Scott, Peterson, Audubon, Rembrandt, Wilson, Catesby, Hiroshige,
Tunnicliffe, Edward Lear, the Goulds, George Stubbs, Keulemans, and many
others, uncluding such unknowns (to me) as Vicomte Alexandre Isadore Leroy
de Barde and Melchior de Hondecoeter - with somewhat brief but presumably
expert commentary.

Covers Asian artists rather well.  Showcases 170 items of bird art.  The
binding is sewn in 12 one-inch areas.  Has a good, unified index and a
helpful glossary of art and book terms.  Perhaps there are copies in other,
local chain book stores.  Use it on a large, flat area or else risk a
hernia, wrist injury, or related orthopedic complications.   

It would have been nice to have included Maj. Allan Brooks, Walter Alois
Weber, Sibley, Walter Ferguson, Chloe Talbot Kelly, Robert Bateman, George
Miksch Sutton, and some others, but they probably are not there due to
space limitations, or because they are still alive, are too recent, or are
relatively uncelebrated otherwise.    

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 ....)