From: Harry Armistead [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 11:35 AM
To: Norman Saunders
Subject: Ferry Neck & Blackwater Refuge (BREWER'S BLACKBIRD), November
28-30, 2008.

 

FERRY NECK/RIGBY'S FOLLY & BLACKWATER REFUGE (Brewer's Blackbird), NOVEMBER
28-30, 2008.

 

Rigby's Folly, Ferry Neck, Talbot County, MD:

 

Friday, November 28.  Clear, calm, starry, 42 degrees F., 7:15 P.M.  A Red
Fox is calling - unearthly, horrid even, calls - making me want to get
inside the house right away.  At the same time a Great Horned Owl is also
cutting loose, but low and sotto voce, from nearby Woods 8 < 100 yards from
the house.  Taken together, a late Halloween ambience.  The little pumpkin
on the front porch is almost untouched by the squirrels.

 

"At night we were sustained by dew, and shamed into pettiness by the
innumerable silences of stars." - T. E. Lawrence, Seven pillars of wisdom.

 

On the way down, listening to 89.5, my prejudice that classical radio
stations don't handle weather forecasts very well is reinforced, when, 3
times, in stentorian tones, the announcer says tonight's low will be 58 (it
turned out to be in the mid-20s there [at Salisbury]).

 

Saturday, November 30.  A beauty.  DEAD calm most of the day but at times SW
5-10, crystal clear, excellent visibility, 33-47-41 degrees F.  Clouds start
to overspread the area at sunset.  Most of the day the Choptank River mouth
is like glass.  Make 4 visits to Lucy Point to see what's on the 'Tank'; not
all that much.  

 

One of the true tests of how good visibility is here is if one can easily
see and distingush through the scope sitting Long-tailed Ducks.  Today it is
easy to not only do that but to also readily distinguish between males and
females, and even to see the whip antenna tails of the drakes.  These days
the longtails usually stay a good mile or more offshore.

 

43 species.  12 waterfowl and 6 species of raptors.

 

Red-throated Loon 1.  Common Loon only 5 (2 seen with captured fish).
Canada Goose up to 590 in the cove.  Bufflehead 145.  Surf Scoter 420.
Ruddy Duck 205 in Irish Creek.  White-winged Scoter 1.  Long-tailed Duck 90.
Red-breasted Merganser only 3.  Lesser Scaup 6.  Bald Eagle, a pair sitting
on the spindle near where Nelson's Island used to be; even at this distance,
3+ miles, it's easy to see the size difference between the male and female
with the scope.  Sharp-shinned Hawk 2.  Red-shouldered Hawk 1.  only 7
robins and 12 waxwings.  Ruby-crowned Kinglet 2.  Brown Thrasher 1.
Laughing Gull just 1.

 

The Olszewskis are here hunting and bring a 2-point buck in to the boat ramp
where they field dress it.  They've left me a big metal trash can full of
corn kernels, a bucket of which I cast around the yard. 

 

See a different 2-point buck, a 4-pointer, 3 does, and a very furry Red Fox
that's hunting in front of the house in the tangles along the driveway.
Find a dead, half-grown Box Turtle in Field 1.  

 

Notable by their absinthe:  not a single Forster's Tern, Common Goldeneye,
Mourning Dove, Horned Grebe, Northern Gannet, or Common Grackle.

 

To one who has been long in city pent,

  'Tis very sweet to look into the fair

   And open face of heaven, - to breathe a prayer

Full in the smile of the blue firmament

-         John Keats (1795-1821).

 

Sunday, November 30.  Mike Solomonov and daughter Mary see 2 Gray Squirrels
in the yard.  Son-in-law Mike's recipe for fried cauliflower with lebneh is
featured as one of the 10 "best restaurant dishes of 2008" by Food & wine
(December 2008, p. 58).  But to return to the matter at hand, from my
bedroom there's a beautiful female Red-bellied Woodpecker in view, looking
down on her, hitching up the nearly-dead Black Locust, only about 10 feet
away, and unaware of me.  After a 2-hour nap the temperature has risen from
46 at 2 P.M. to 51 at 7.  Going out the driveway (always called a "lane"
locally) soon afterwards there's moths with mist, drizzle, and fog.   

 

BLACKWATER NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE (Sunday), 6:30 A.M. - 12:45 P.M., a
birdwalk with George Harrington and Brandt & Terry Doscher.  Numbers below
include some seen before and after the official "walk" as well as sightings
along Egypt Road.  Head around Wildlife Drive 4 times.

 

49 species.

 

Overcast, steady (and still much-needed) rain, winds calm becoming NE 5-10
(and for a while a somewhat scary, rapidly intensifying 25-30 m.p.h.).
Water levels moderately high everywhere but it is gratifying, after two
terrible years of summer droughts, to see the ditches, impoundments, and low
field areas filling up with rain.  Surprisingly, birds are everywhere today,
with good numbers of robins, goldfinches, juncos, starlings, sparrows, and
blackbirds feeding on the ground at close range.  There is even a mixed
species foraging guild with chickadees, nuthatches, a couple of downies, a
Hermit Thrush, a Fox Sparrow, and a dozen cardinals.

 

BREWER'S BLACKBIRD.  An adult male feeding on the grass right by refuge
headquarters, seen at close range and at leisure by the 4 of us.  A welcome
addition to my state list.

 

6 Great Egrets.  4 AMERICAN WHITE PELICANS (been present for a while;
resting out on the Blackwater River tumps).  Only 14 Tundra Swans.  1 adult
Snow Goose (where are the 100s of snows and blues usually here at this time
of year?).  900 Mallards.  40 black ducks.  65 pintails.  16 Hooded
Mergansers.  12 Bald Eagles.  6 Greater Yellowlegs.  45 Dunlin.  18 adult
Great Black-backed Gulls (on the lamp posts of the Rt. 50 [Malkus] Bridge).
2 kingfishers.  2 Brown-headed Nuthatches.  375 robins.  14 bluebirds.  1450
starlings (most of these in a "pure" flock in an Egypt Road field).  5
Chipping Sparrows.  30 juncos.  170 American Goldfinches (we fail to find a
single siskin with them).  7 Savannah Sparrows.    

 

MAMMALS:  3 deer, 1 each of Fox & Gray Squirrel, and a Red Fox (at 7:03
A.M.).  

 

MISSED:  Fish Crow, Forster's Tern, Common Grackle.

 

BAD YEAR (autumn, that is), from everything I've seen, or heard from others,
for Yellow-rumped Warblers.  Not too many.  At Kiptopeke Jethro Runco's
bandings of them are way down.

 

Next weekend I hope to repeat this same drill.

 

Best to all. - Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.

 

  _____  

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