EASTERN SHORE, VIRGINIA & MARYLAND, December 18-21, 2009. A 4-day road trip with Jared Sparks. The Wachapreague and Nassawadox notes below are just for the party areas Jared and I covered on those counts.
GETTING THERE, Friday, December 18. The trip down is always good with the promise of good sightings at prime places. 1000s of blackbirds leave their roosts at dawn near Churchman’s Marsh, 1000s of Snow Goose fan out to the fields to forage in southern Delaware.
Ocean City, MD, area. The inlet. High tide and rising, NE 10 or less, 32, sunny but becoming hazy, overcast, and ominous. Great views of 8 Common Eiders, incl. an adult male, plus 4 Harlequin Ducks. Also: 3 Long-tailed Ducks, 1 Bonaparte’s Gull, 7 Surf, 1 Black & 225 unID’d scoters, 7 gannets, 14 Purple Sandpipers, 12 Red-throated & 1 Common loon, 2 Double-crested Cormorants, 10 Forster’s Terns, 20 Brant, 7 turnstones, 12 Sanderlings, 2 Red-breasted Mergansers, and, on the sand, 185 Rock Pigeons. 10:15-11:15 A.M.
Skimmer Island. Nothing, except 25 Buffleheads.
West Ocean City pond: full of water and waterfowl. 131 Tundra Swans, 1 Pied-billed Grebe, 14 Gadwalls, 60 Canvasbacks, 25 Lesser Scaup, 2 male Redheads, 45 pintails, 4 shovelers, 3 Buffleheads, 30 coots, 6 Great Blue Herons, 7 Hooded Mergansers, 1 Snow and 0 (!) Canada geese, 85 Mallards, 55 Ring-necked & 4 American Black Ducks, and 30 Green-winged Teal. 11:45 A.M. -12:15 P.M. 39 degrees F.
Eagle’s Nest Campground. 20 Gadwalls, 85 American Wigeon, 1 Ruddy & 70 American Black Ducks (the latter on the west side of Assateague Island), 10 Mallards, 1 Pied-billed Grebe, 5 shovelers, 710 Dunlin, 175 Buffleheads, 3 Common Loons, 10 Willets, 6 oystercatchers, 390 Brant, 55 Black-bellied Plovers, and 10 Mallards. Lovely winding road on the way in to the edge of Sinepuxent Bay and the lady at the campground office is very friendly. They do ask that you stop in the office to let them know what you’re doing.
Chincoteague N.W.R. 3 P.M. until dark (5 P.M.). Raw, cold, overcast, 37. Almost calm but NE 10 some of the time. Good conditions. Great Egret 81, 17 WHITE IBIS (all immatures), 9 Little Blue Herons (just 1 of them an adult), 6 Marbled Godwits, 63 Willets, 20 Forster’s Terns, 2 Common Goldeneyes. Very low tide. The godwits and Willets are foraging in Tom’s Cove by the outlet of Swan Cove pool. Run into Jennifer Elmer.
Locustville. Overnight in George and Barbara Reiger’s charming guesthouse. Paul and Sharon Plishka come to visit. Paul sings with the Metropolitan Opera and gives me a videodisc of a performance of Falstaff in which he sang the lead role. They express interest in the Cape Charles count and I invite them to ride with me. Snow Geese are clamoring outside in the dark in the Rattrap/Finney creeks estuary.
WACHAPREAGUE Christmas Bird Count, Saturday, December 19. I’ve seen better. Overcast and rain, mostly steady and heavy, all day. Winds 30-40 m.p.h., gusting higher. 38-42 degrees. Tide 3 feet or more above normal. The docks and most of the street along the harbor are submerged. There is no sign of saltmarsh. It is completely submerged. The street fills up with dense windrows of Spartina alterniflora stalks. People are trailering their boats from the docks, esp. the VIMS boats. We cover the SW sector of the count, the area around Wachapreague. Needless to say our boat trip to Cedar Island with Ruth Boettcher is weathered out. 65 miles by car, which we seldom left, < 1 mile on foot. In spite of this the day’s birds are memorable. Ditches are overflowing. Some roads have stretches of up to 400 feet under rain water runoff. Part of Seaside Road is submerged by tidal water. I get stuck in deep water in a ditch for 15 minutes.
7 Common Loons, 3000 Snow & 30 Blue, 1 adult ROSS’s, and 1 hybrid Ross’s X Snow goose, 155 Brant, 23 Hooded Mergansers, 4 Bald Eagles, 1 Merlin (carrying a small bird), 2 Clapper Rails (in the harbor channel trying to swim but being swept rapidly to the south), 2 Semipalmated Plovers, 67 Killdeer, 65 Greater & 1 Lesser yellowlegs, 37 Marbled Godwits, 9 Short-billed Dowitchers, 15 Willets, 3 Forster’s Terns, 73 American Crows, 38 bluebirds, 12 waxwings, a Palm Warbler, and 49 meadowlarks. 59 species, 3 of them poached (but not in the culinary sense).
Most of the shorebirds are in the extremely flooded fields incl. the Willets, godwits, and dowitchers (numbers above for these 3 shorebird species are approximate, we didn’t record them since they are in George’s area). The 2 Ross’s-complex geese, the godwits, Willets, and all but 1 of the dowitchers are poached in George’s area in a field just north of the Locustville town area. George sees all of these, too. I have never seen Marbled Godwits actively feeding in field before; they are probing vigorously. The compilation in the Island House Restaurant, which closed early today, is cancelled. This 1st weekend of the count period has extreme weather more often than not.
NASSAWADOX Christmas Bird Count, Sunday, December 20. Overcast early but becoming fair c. 9:45 A.M., then rapidly clearing and mostly clear the rest of the day. 30-35 degrees F. but seems much colder. NW 20-25. Today’s boat trip, to Hog Island, is cancelled, too, for the 3rd straight year. Tide 1-2 feet above normal in the morning but with a, mercifully, near normal low tide late in the afternoon. Little ice.
Jared and I cover Bell Neck (part of the Willis Wharf party area) in the morning, then Hare Valley west of Route 13 (SW of Exmore) in the afternoon. 66 miles by car, 2 on foot. 62 species.
A pretty but very windy day. The light covering of last night’s snow mostly melts during the course of today. The road in to TNC’s beautiful Brownsville house is covered with Spartina wrack. I leave my territory in mid-day to drive over it, mash it down some, then use a Swiss Army knife saw (small but effective) to cut the ends off a blowover Red Cedar that mostly blocks the road. As yesterday, another rough one for landbirds. All of the shorebirds are seen in the heavily (and I do mean heavily) flooded fields.
13 Tundra Swans, 20 Hooded Mergansers, 11 Black Vultures, 7 Bald Eagles, 12 Black-bellied and 17 Semipalmated plovers, 258 Killdeer (Jared & I both independently count some of them in one field and come up with matching totals of 195; a whopping 412 are seen on the count), 12 Greater Yellowlegs, 24 Dunlin, 2 Pileated Woodpeckers, 2 Eastern Phoebes, 8 Brown-headed Nuthatches (Bell Neck), 23 bluebirds, a Hermit Thrush, 50 American Pipits, 1 Pine & 8 Palm warblers (both forms), 2 Fox Sparrows, 73 Meadowlarks, 195 cowbirds, and 35 House Finches.
HEADING HOME, Monday, December 21.
Willis Wharf, VA, 7:45-8:30 A.M., clear, NW 15, 30 degrees F. The tide is rising but low with many shorebirds on the flats right in front of the post office: 105 Marbled Godwits, 50 Willets, 25 Short-billed Dowitchers, 205 Dunlin, 45 Ruddy Turnstones (foraging on the pile of fresh clam shells next to the seafood place), and a Greater Yellowlegs. Also: 950 Snow and 15 Blue geese headed south, a Pied-billed Grebe, 25 Hooded Mergansers, and a female Common Goldeneye, a species missed on the Christmas count here yesterday. Jared and I buy some fresh shellfish, then take off.
We head home right after Willis Wharf, concerned about the 15-23 inches of snow that fell in Philadelphia after we left. A Great Egret sitting out of the wind and in the sun near Temperanceville. See Bald Eagles while driving north on Route 13 at Onley, VA, (1), in MD just north of the MD/VA line (4), Pocomoke City (2), and just south of Princess Anne (1).
LIFE IN THE CITY. Labor-intensive chickadees – Carolina Chickadee makes off with a sunflower kernel, places it between its feet, and raps it 36 times, each rap consisting of 3 or so rapid pecks, Dec. 11. Coming back after retrieving a big sycamore branch to saw up for firewood there’s a dead Gray Squirrel in the back alley with wounds on its neck. Then I spot a Red-tailed Hawk perched high in a tree 200 feet away. After finishing sawing the limb I check back and the hawk and squirrel are gone, Dec. 12. A flock of 85 Canada Geese goes over, high, real ones, on their way south, Dec. 12. On Dec. 14, while removing leaves from the back steps that lead down to the cellar I discover a torpid Redback Salamander holed up there.
OYSTERS: “While pearls from the American Oyster are uncommon, lackluster, and of little worth, the nacre or iridescent inner shell is beautiful – typically ivory and purple – like a winter sunset- and has traditional value. Native Americans once used pieces of oyster and clam shells, called wampum, for trading and currency.” – Skipjacks, by Christopher White (St. Martin’s Press, 2009, p. 216-217).
Addendum: On Dec. 6 at Blackwater N.W.R. we find one of this year’s Orchard Oriole nests just across the ditch of Pool 1 as you go along Wildlife Drive. That’s the way it is every year. After the leaves fall some secrets are revealed.
THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
- Wendell Berry
This is reminiscent of Walt Whitman, who wrote: “I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained … a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.”
Best to all. – Harry Armistead.
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