AT RIGBY’S FOLLY:
TUESDAY, AUGUST 4, 2009. Late afternoon only. The recently ploughed and planted fields with freshly-sprouted soy beans are now very wet and soft with some standing water and are attractive to foraging blackbirds, robins, starlings, kingbirds, and some shorebirds. Some new high counts or close to: 29 Killdeer (26 in Field 1, 3 in Field 2) and 125 Brown-headed Cowbirds. Best of all, 6 Pectoral Sandpipers moving back and forth between Fields 1 & 2, only the 4th property record. On their way to the Argentine. May Rigby’s Folly inverts help them get there in good shape.
The Horned Grebe is present all 3 days. The dampness has stimulated 10 toadstools, absent July 30, to grow from the remains of the ground up stump of a dead Tulip Poplar. 161 Laughing Gulls, a dusk flight. 12 Diamondback Terrapin at the mouth of the cove. 65 robins in Field 2. Since last Thursday Osprey nesting material has been placed on the boat lift. Across the cove is a large Osprey nest on top of a neighbor’s boat, in spite of there being there a dozen small white poles with fluttering orange flags as a deterrent. In fact, this nest is as big as some eagle nests. A bird is seen adding to the nest today.
3 each of Snowy Egret, Green Heron, Forster’s Tern. 10 Mallards and 8 Wood Ducks. 1 adult Red-tailed Hawk. There’s been rain since last time and the ponds have filled slightly. On the impervious boat cushion out on the rocking chair by Field 1 there is a small pool of water. 7 deer incl. a small fawn. A young Red Fox. For a short day here at what is usually a “nothing” time of year, quite a bit to report. Fair, 90-82, SW 5-10, hot, humid.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5. Leave at 6:30 A.M., return at 7 P.M. The 6 Pectoral Sandpipers are still present in Field 1. John Weske and I find a dead 1’ Menhaden under the trees on the lawn. John suggests that possibly a Bald Eagle forced an Osprey to drop it overhead from there. We flush 2 birds from trees right over the dead fish, do not see them well, but believe they are a Black Vulture and an immature Bald Eagle. We see a Red Fox kit in Fields 1 and 2 both on leaving and returning plus a 2nd one on Tranquility Lane in the evening. 85 degrees at 7:30 P.M., 82 at 9 P.M. Hot. A ˝-grown Fowlers’ Toad on the lawn, the first one seen in weeks. Still some fireflies. 6 Wild Turkeys in Field 4 at 6:30 P.M.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 6. Overcast, calm, 72 degrees F. Present only until 10:30 A.M. Steady but light rain becoming intermittent. In Field 1 are 3 Lesser Yellowlegs, c. the 15th yard record, but the Killdeer are down to only 4. Robins are widespread with 117 - 54 in Field 2, 56 in Field 4, and 7 in Field 6 plus a few starlings and cowbirds. 7 deer including a little, baby, spotted fawn. 1 immature Bald Eagle. 2 Black Vultures. 9 Barn Swallows. 1 immature Red-tailed Hawk. An Osprey flies over the yard clutching a dead Loblolly Pine branch with 2 cones attached. The dead Menhaden is still present on the lawn; I toss it out into Field 1. Not a bad list of sightings for a partial morning on a rainy day.
ELSEWHERE: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5. Royal Tern mopping up operations. I ride with John Weske in his venerable 1990 Ford truck, an XLT Lariat, chock-a-block with his banding armamentarium of poles, chicken wire, boxes of bands, PFDs, tools, jugs of water, and other goodies. We drive from Rigby’s Folly to Ocean City to Crisfield then back to Rigby’s Folly, c. 250 miles.
REEDY ISLAND, Ocean City, MD. Joining us are Dave Brinker and his daughter, Laurel, Tami Pearl, Sally Schultz, and Nat Donkin, the latter 3 resplendent in their National Park Service uniforms and regalia, the rest of us looking like so many raggle-taggle gypsy-o’s, with the exception of Dave, who sports his Maryland Dept. of Natural Resources shirt. On July 7 we banded 135 Royal Tern chicks here and observed c. 55 unhatched eggs plus 6 chicks too small to band. This time we only find 4 bandable chicks, but, mopping up operations such as this have wildly variable results and sometimes there’s nothing to do the 2nd time around.
We find 2 eggs this time, no doubt doomed to failure. See 2 Great Egrets and 2 Tricolored Herons. Dave relates that 650-685 pairs of Laughing Gulls nested at Reedy just east of the tern colony earlier this summer, perhaps their only Maryland breeding site. For the first (and I’d hope last) time a Royal Tern chick relieves itself on my glasses w/o soiling my “person.”
Nat Donkin brings news from Assateague Island, MD. He shows us a photograph (taken on Monday I think he said) of the BROWN BOOBY, Maryland’s first, plus one of a beached Greater Shearwater. There have also been 2 Black-necked Stilts on Assateague. A colony of Common Terns has had its eggs punctured (but not eaten) by Black-crowned Night Herons. Just plain nasty.
SKIMMER ISLAND, Ocean City, MD. We next visit here. A falling tide attracts foraging shorebirds including 115 Sanderlings, 14 turnstones, a Semipalmated Plover, 8 Least Sandpipers, 4 Willets, 16 Short-billed Dowitchers, and a MARBLED GODWIT and there are 28 Black-crowned Night and 2 Tricolored herons, 22 Great and 1 Snowy egret, 18 non-nesting Black Skimmers, 25 Brown Pelicans, 80 cormorants, 8 Barn Swallows, 8 Red-winged Blackbirds, and 4 starlings, the latter foraging in the intertidal zone. Lots of Common and Royal terns, the royals engaging in synchronized pair flights, the carrying of minnows, and very vocal behavior. Dave erects several signs to try to keep visitation nil. A SANDWICH TERN flies over nearby.
CLUMP ISLAND, Fox Islands archipelago, Accomack County, VA, c. 6 miles SW of Crisfield, MD. 1:45-3:15 P.M. This attractive, remote marshy island group with some sandy beaches and mudflats is owned by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. On July 7: 908 Royal Tern chicks were banded here and there were 27 unhatched eggs and 9 young too small to band. We corral 30 or so chicks but only 7 are unbanded. Arrayed on a beach 100 yards away are 91 Black Skimmers; too bad they’re all adults.
Present and accounted for and counted are a Black-bellied Plover, 2 black ducks, 5 Ospreys, 25 Brown Pelicans, 2 Great and 3 Snowy egrets, 2 Red-winged Blackbirds, a Great Blue Heron, 11 Barn Swallows (no doubt nesters around the C.B.F. building), 7 oystercatchers (2 of them young), 6 Canada Geese, a bunch of cormorants, 4 Semipalmated Plovers, and c. 55 unID’d distant and in-flight shorebirds (I’m betting Least Sandpipers). Also: 1 Cabbage White. Laughing Gulls appear to be nesting here.
Personnel: Dave Brinker and his daughter Laurel, John Weske, and me. John enjoys letting others take the helm, esp. if they have little or no experience with that. Today he has Laurel do this, benefiting from his gentle instruction (red right returning, avoid that crabpot, this is the throttle, turn so as to ride out that oncoming boat’s wake). Laurel is pleased to do this and acquits herself well, with poise and confidence. I believe she’s 13. The big 115 horse outboard moves us along at 25+ m.p.h. or so.
BANDING RECOVERIES. Thanks to Patricia Rose for reporting color-banded Brown Pelican J60 from Point Lookout on July 29, 2009. Dave Brinker determined it had been banded as a chick on July 12, 2000, at South Point Marsh, Accomack County, VA, and is thus 9 years old, probably breeding nearby this year but across the Bay from Pt. Lookout. A dead adult Royal Tern found by John Weske at Clump Island, Accomack County, VA, on Wednesday had been banded by him at Wreck Island, VA, in 2004.
“AS TIME GOES BY … “ (with apologies to Bogey) For several weeks now the Cicadas have been sizzlin’ away, the Goldenrod has been bloomin’, and the Monarchs have started waftin’ in. Times movin’ on. Sounds like Sarah Palin (Palin’?).
FINALIST FOR WORLD’S CUTEST BIRD. 2 Rock Ptarmigan chicks, almost spherical, apparently standing on the back of their mother, as seen on page 85 of Western birds, vol. 40, no. 2, 2009. The related article concerns “Birds of the Ketchikan area, southeast Alaska,” pages 54-144. This is, I would say, an excellent journal with great articles and book reviews, too.
A RIPPING GOOD STORM. From c. 2:45-4 A.M. a strong system with much thunder and lightning moves through the Rigby’s Folly area early on Thursday in the wee smalls. The windows rattle twice, my bed shakes once, from thunder claps. Gradually the storm moves on to the north, having soaked most of what is on the front porch, much of which is back under the roof by several feet.
I like to think of this as a sort of percussive nocturne suite, the music of artillery, the full moon present “off-stage” as with the hunters’ horns in Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie towards its beginning, but informing the cloudy canopy with a constant glow, a sort of synesthetic basso continuo for the suite, as it were, but oblique as it sinks in the west, gradually lurching towards moonset. The artillery transitions to a diminuendo as the storm slowly moves north. Eventually the thunder becomes inaudible, even though the lightning still lights up the distant clouds.
When I awake in the fresh morning there’s standing water everywhere, the fields are sodden, puddles are all over, except in the deep woods where May’s vernal pools are still just so many recessed beds of sodden fallen leaves from last autumn. I’d guess 2 to 3 inches of rain, easy. July’s drought is well over. Now it’s way too wet. I wish for clear skies, sun, and a drying out. This sort of extreme weather reminds me of the chapter “Vicissitudes of Arizona weather” (pages 10-22) in Herbert Brandt’s great book Arizona and its birdlife (the Bird Research Foundation, 1951, 723 pages).
Best to all. – Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.
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