From: Harry Armistead [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2008 1:32 PM
To: Norman Saunders
Subject: Elliott Island Road & Ferry Neck, August 2-3, 2008.

 

AUGUST 2, Saturday, 2008.
 
RIGBY'S FOLLY.  Armistead place near Royal Oak, Talbot County, MD.  5 P.M.
until dark only.  Fair, calm becoming NE 5+, 92-84 degrees F., tide high but
falling.  Didn't leave the yard area.
 
A Great Horned Owl calling at 7:35 P.M.  A Least Sandpiper flying around at
the head of the cove.  Almost annual as flyovers.  80 feral Mallards, a
sudden, recent increase, including the brood of 4 ducklings seen 2 weeks
ago, with a, presumably, wild male American Black Duck.  1 Forster's Tern.
7 Purple Martins.  10 Chimney Swifts.  Young Ospreys still hanging around
their piling nest at the head of the cove.  2 Green Herons,  40 Laughing
Gulls.  1 crested flycatcher.  No Barn Swallows around the dock.  
 
3 Diamondback Terrapin.  1 Fowler's Toad.  
 
Even drier than last week.  The much-bruited evening storm - winds up to 60
m.p.h., nickel-sized hail, much cloud to ground lightning - never
materialized, here.  Sat out by the dock waiting for this apocalyptic event
to come in from the north but just some distant flashes of lightning and
spectacular clouds with great shafts of light shooting over their peaks from
behind them as the sun set.  Even drier than last week.  Fields still
fallow.
 
AUGUST 3, Sunday.  For several years I've done a sort of Last Hurrah of the
Singing Season Big Day on the Elliott Island Road.
 
ELLIOTT ISLAND ROAD, Dorchester County, MD.  17 hours: 4:30 A.M. - 9:30 P.M.
117 miles by car.  From Vienna down to McCready's Creek and Fishing Point
but with a northern pseudopod to the Vienna Route 50 borrow pit and Chicone
Creek.  Also Kraft Neck and Lewis Wharf roads in their entirety as well as
small sections of Steele Neck and Drawbridge roads and Henry's Crossroad.
 
96 species.  Interesting misses:  Mute Swan.  Wood Duck.  Blue-winged Teal.
Gadwall.  Northern Bobwhite.  Renee Russo.  King Rail.  Great Black-backed
Gull.  Chuck-will's-widow (have stopped calling by this time of year).  Blue
Jay.  Fish Crow.  Brown Thrasher.  Prairie Warbler.  Yellow-breasted Chat.
Summer Tanager.  Grasshopper Sparrow.  A special effort is made to find King
Rail, bobwhite, and Summer Tanager - to no avail.
 
Of most interest:  a LOUISIANA WATERTHRUSH.  Foraging in the leaf litter
right at the side of the road in the dense deciduous forest just north of
Fishing Point - low, wet woodlands with Sycamores, American Hackberries, and
other hardwoods plus lots of vines and undergrowth.  It is bopping up and
down.  Excellent look at the conspicuous, white superciliary stripe
(widening posterior to the eyes) and lack of yellowish underparts such as
Northern Waterthrushes have here in the fall.  There's no suitable breeding
habitat for many miles; this is a migrant.  12:29 P.M.  
 
Also:  only 3 Brown Pelicans and 2 Double-crested Cormorants in spite of
many hundreds breeding just a few miles to the west.  2 Tricolored Herons, 3
Glossy Ibis, all of 4 Mallards, 24 Ospreys, 11 Bald Eagles, 3 Northern
Harriers, 5 Clapper & 9 Virginia rails, 5 Common Moorhens.
 
21 Wild Turkeys (in configurations of 1, 10, 7, 2, and 1, including one way
out on the marsh 2 miles from the mainland that disappears, skulking into a
stand of Phragmites), 14 Greater & 1 Lesser yellowlegs, 3 Least Sandpipers,
515 Laughing Gulls, 30 Royal Terns (in one group of 16 in the morning 7 are
banded on the right leg). 
 
Only 1 Yellow-billed Cuckoo, 2 screech-owls, 2 Great Horned Owl (1 perched
on an exposed dead loblolly in full sunlight at 6:30 A.M.), 1 Acadian
Flycatcher, 14 kingbirds, 190 Purple Martins, 12 Bank & 300 Barn swallows, 8
Brown-headed Nuthatches, 1 gnatcatcher, only 1 Wood Thrush, 18 bluebirds, 1
waxwing.   
 
7 warbler species incl. 1 Yellow (a migrant flying in and landing way out in
the marsh away from any trees), 3 Worm-eatings (1 of them seen singing), and
11 yellowthroats, 16 Blue Grosbeaks, 18 Indigo Buntings, 5 Field, 4
Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed, 22 Seaside, 4 Song & 4 singing Swamp sparrows, 4
Bobolinks, 4 Orchard Orioles, and 12 Boat-tailed Grackles.
 
Signs of successful BREEDING BIRDS:  4 c. 2/3-grown Black-necked Stilts with
1 parent bird, rather fully feathered.  2 young Willets, also c. 2/3-grown
with an adult (Willets are usually gone by this time of the summer).  A
female American Black Duck with 3 c. 1/2-grown ducklings.  House Sparrows
are breeding in the Osprey nest at McCready's Creek (on the no. 1 channel
marker at the end of the west inlet bulkhead).  Several active Osprey nests.
An adult Common Moorhen with 1 tiny downy young swimming.  Single juvenile
Brown-headed Cowbirds with an Orchard Oriole and an Eastern Wood-Pewee. 
 
Blue Grosbeaks, Marsh Wrens, and Indigo Buntings still singing a lot but the
Seaside Sparrows and Orchard Orioles have become silent and rather
inconspicuous.   
 
HERPS:  38 Gray Tree Frogs, started calling at dusk, found from the north
end of Savanna Lake almost all the way up to Vienna.  During the course of a
year I often do not encounter them at all here.  c. 45 Green Tree Frogs,
some choruses both before dawn and after sunset.  1 Fowler's Toad.  3
Southern Leopard Frogs.  6 Green Frogs.  a Mud Turtle on the road.  2
Diamondback Terrapin
 
MAMMALS:  1 Muskrat, 3 White-tailed Deer, 2 Sika Deer, 2 Red Foxes (1 adult
and 1 kit, but in separate areas), 1 Gray Squirrel, 1 unID'd bat, 5 Eastern
Cottontails.
 
BUTTERFLIES:  1 Spicebush Swallowtail, 28 Monarchs (widespread; there's a
big patch of Milkweed just S. of Chicone Creek), 7 Cloudless Sulphurs, 2
Silver-spotted Skippers, 1 Buckeye, 1 Cabbage White (like seeing only 1
starling), 3 Red-spotted Purples, 3 Black Swallowtails, 4 Orange Sulphurs, 1
American Lady, 1 Viceroy, and 8 Variegated Fritillaries (probably a lot more
present; they seem to favor areas in the vicinity of the borrow pit and the
area around Chicone Creek).  
 
OTHER TAXA.  3 Crayfish on the roads just after sunrise.  These are c. 5"
long and pugnacious, rear up, spread their claws, and open them.  Katydid
choruses after sunset.   
 
WEATHER:  Clear to fair to clear again.  Winds NE 5-10 changing to NW
10-15-5-calm.  temps 73-86 but in protected, windless areas in the sun -
very hot.  Last year when we did this trip the overnight LOW was 84.  Tide
above normal high to low then high again, but dropping at the end.  Some fog
and mist in the early morning.  Lovely, near-new moon setting soon after the
sun does.  A deluge last night with many big puddles on the roads, leaves
and trees still glistening with moisture in the early morning sun, and
dripping.  Visibility fair becoming excellent in late afternoon.
 
A day of generally splendid, comfortable weather, with lovely sunrise and
sunset, and good listening conditions.  Countless thousands of Marsh
Hibiscuses blooming almost everywhere there is brackish marsh as well as in
the ditches.  Bugs not a problem.
 
Several fields full of blooming thistles patronized by iconic and brilliant
goldfinches.
 
SPECIES, cumulative totals: 58 by 7:15 A.M., 60 by 7:30, 68 by 8:30, 70 by
9, 74 by 10, 88 by noon.  No new species found after 4:00 P.M., a stretch of
5.5 hours!  A Rock Dove is species 95, a House Finch 93, and a Prothonotary
Warbler at Chicone Creek the last species (96) of the day. 
 
MY FAVORITE DITCH.  Yes, a ditch can be a thing of beauty.  3-4' deep, 5'
wide.  Apparently tidal.  Stretches for 100 yards then disappears into a
woodland.  Full of blooming Pickerelweed and profuse vegetation on the
banks.
 
Within the area of a fraction of an acre are: Cardinal Flowers, Marsh
Hibiscus, Panicum virgatum, Baccharis halimifolia, a legume-pea-like plant
with yellow flowers (very common; I just don't know the name), Sweet Gum,
clover with big purple blossoms, Trumpet Creeper, Persimmons, various oaks,
Hercules Club, Phragmites, Black Cherries, Queen Anne's Lace, Broad-leaved
Cattail, honeysuckle, Red Maples, Loblolly Pines, blackberries,
Joe-pye-weed, Smilax, and many other plants whose names I don't know,
including a mystery tree I'll investigate further.  
 
Butterflies there at 2:40 P.M.: 2 Silver-spotted Skippers, 4 Monarchs, 1
Buckeye, 2 Orange Sulphurs.  The water full of minnows.  Several species of
dragonflies.  A delightful palustrine garden thronging with life.  Gray Tree
Frog.  Nearby are several other ditches and low areas, some straight, some
meandering, also with Cardinal Flowers, with a Spicebush Swallowtail
nectaring on one of them.
 
SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS. GLORY IN THE FLOWER.  An extensive Spartina patens
meadow, beautiful enough in its own right, is spangled with thousands of
diffuse, small, subtle Marsh Pinks (a gentian), one of the better sights in
the Elliott marsh at this time of year.  Bill Burt, whose writings on this
area and about marshes in general are so affecting, first brought Marsh
Pinks to my attention.  A color photograph of his with pinks in a Spartina
meadow hangs in our dining room.  
 
CAUSE FOR CONCERN.  I have not mentioned the exact locations for these
flowers.  Are some of these species at risk from people coming to dig them
up?  
 
"I believe in neighborhood birding ... a regimen of regularly focused
attention to sites proximate to the daily doings of one's life ... this sort
of birding earns an intimacy of place, be it ever so humble, that has its
own rewards ... it forges a marriage of focus and locus, serving to bind us
to the land and attune us to the passing seasons and the deeper rhythms of
life.  And every once in a while you see somethung surprising."  Alex
Wilson, 'the Kingbird," Dec. 2007. p. 291.   
 
 Best to all. - Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.  

  _____  

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