Rigby’s Folly/Ferry Neck, Talbot County, MD, January 4-7, 2010, Liz & Harry Armistead. 4 cold, partially clear days with strong NW winds.
Monday, January 4. 55 Turkey Vultures on the way down, far below our totals of late last fall. Many 100s (but not 1000s as in some nearby areas) of Snow Geese heading east over Route 301. 4 Bald Eagles - 2 adults, 2 immatures - around the pond SE of Hope, Route 481, 1 actually sitting on the ice. 8 Wild Turkeys w. of St. Michaels along Route 33, a favored place. In the house traps, 1 House Mouse, not bad considering we had not been there to check for a month. Overcast becoming fair, NW 15, cold, 36 degrees F. Fresh water areas very high.
14 species. 3 P.M. until dark only. Best of all: 30 Snow Geese headed south in the distance over Ferry Neck, 2nd highest count for the property. 975 Canada Geese, 35 Tundra Swans, 1 Killdeer, 12 robins, and a flicker. Some clusters of pancake ice close to shore at Lucy Point. Irish Creek mostly frozen as is much of the area between Lucy Point and Wooden Point. Snow has melted except for scattered remnants in shaded areas.
Tuesday, January 5. Fair, 27-36, NW 15-20, cold, windy.
37 species. Liz and I see an imm. male Baltimore Oriole on the s. side of Field 6 atop a Red Cedar, the only property record between the dates of September 29 and April 30 except for singles seen October 21, 2000 (Liz & me) and one in the yard Magnolia grandiflora by Richard C. Williams, Jr., and me on November 29, 1969. Richard was fondly known as Smoo or the Psi U Smoothie, died too young, and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Boston, a prime warbler area in spring. After I knew him at Penn he began doing marathons and dove in places such as the Palau Archipelago. He was a jazz drummer and radio DJ among other accomplishments.
Other birds: 4 Black Vultures, 2 ad. & 1 imm. Bald Eagle, an imm. Northern Harrier, 6 flickers, 30 robins, 20 waxwings, 1 Pileated Woodpecker, 35 Myrtle Warblers, 425 European Starlings (one of the higher counts here), 600 Red-winged Blackbirds but only 6 Common Grackles, 5 chickadees, 50 Brown-headed Cowbirds, 2 towhees, 22 juncos, and 20 Canvasbacks. 900 Canada Geese. In mid-afternoon a Great Horned Owl flushes from the south side of Woods 8, flies low and fast, and quickly ducks back into the woods out-of-sight before the crows see it. Good. 3 deer. Michael & Nancy Lytell come for dinner.
Wednesday, January 6. Overcast, then broken clouds, then fair, 31-39, NW 15-25. Take a 4-hour walk before a late lunch, then a 1-hour walk along the shoreline around sunset, which is a perfect one, the outline of the blazing sun true-to-form right down to the horizon but no green flash. 34 species. Cold, windy.
Canada Goose 850, Mallard 9, Common Goldeneye 3, Bufflehead 22, 1 ad. Bald Eagle, 5 flickers, Winter Wren 1 (in the Olszewski Woods), Gray Catbird 1, bluebird 6, Swamp Sparrow 3, 12 juncos, and a prolonged look at the Baltimore Oriole again, this time c. 700 feet from where he was yesterday. Gray Squirrel 1, deer 4.
BREAKING THE ICE. Much of the Olszewski Trails (which are just over 0.5 miles in extent) area is covered by ice with water several inches deep underneath most of it. It takes a long time to “walk” these trails under such conditions. The opaque, whitish ice is solid - one does not go through it. Some of the black ice is likewise. Much of the rest gives way, or comes close it, breaking into irregular panes of thin, clear ice a foot square or more. When this happens my feet and ankles often slip forward and go partially underneath the unbroken ice. This is somewhere between uncomfortable and painful for the top of my feet, in the shallower areas, or my shins where the water underneath is deeper. Cracks sometimes preceed me, one extending over 30 feet within a second or two of my tread behind it. I nearly fall over twice, yet there is a fascination and joy in creeping along these minor iceways, trying to keep one’s balance.
Some of it reminds me of an Arctic survival story, I forget which, when several explorers suddenly find themselves on thin sea ice, far from fast land. They have to keep going but the ice continuously threatens to break under them so that to keep from doing this they must run for long stretches until the ice becomes thicker. If they hesitate they’d have plunged into deep sea water and not been able to get on top of the ice again, which would mean death in less than 15 minutes.
A really compelling celebrator of cold phenomena is poet/writer Gretel Ehrlich, whose books include This cold heaven: seven seasons in Greenland (Pantheon Books, 2001, 377p.). She preferred to be in Greenland in the winter, when travel on the ice has more possibilities than at other times of the year. Global climate change must be heart-rending for her. In my recent 3-week trip to Antarctic regions, most of the time it was warmer than it has been in the Mid-Atlantic these past few weeks.
“The ice cap itself was a siren bringing me back to Greenland, its walls of blue sapphire and sheer immensity always beguiling. Part jewel, part eye, part lighthouse, part recumbent monolith, the ice is a bright spot on the upper tier of the globe where the world’s purse strings have been pulled tight, nudging the tops of three continents together. Summers, it burns in the sun, and in the dark it hoards moonlight. I liked how the island was almost uninhabitable, how ice had pushed humans all the way to the edge, where they lived in tight villages on a filigree of rock; how on topo maps the white massifs were marked “unexplored.” “ p. xiv, This cold heaven.
I find a Diamondback Terrapin carapace and plastron, still connected but bleached on the south side of the New Hedgerow, which is on the north side of Field 4. I suppose this turtle was either dropped by a Bald Eagle or else died during the process of hauling out to lay and bury eggs. Its shell is 600 feet from the cove edge.
Within the west side of Woods 1 I there’s the skull of a small doe and right next to it that of an 8-point buck, the complete dentition of the upper jaw still in place. It will join other treasures in the confines of the garage.
John Swaine harvests the Soy Beans in Field 4, taking advantage of the frozen ground.
Thursday, January 7. The day of leaving. Fair, 29-32, NW 10, continued cold and windy. Haul the scope out to Lucy Point, but, as with every day this visit, the rough waters make scanning for fowl far offshore unrewarding. 19 species. Leave for home 11 A.M.
Canada Goose 975, Tundra Swan 61, Herring Gull 113 (in one group on Irish Creek ice, carefully scrutinized for unusual gulls to no effect), 1 American Black Duck, 30 Bufflehads, 1 Red-breasted Merganser, 28 Long-tailed Ducks (these actively engaged in flights far offshore in the mouth of the Choptank River), 1 adult Bald Eagle (flies right over the waterfowl, but none flush), 20 Surf Scoters.
At the corn this morning by the base of the big, yard Willow Oak: 2 Gray Squirrels, 5 American Crows, and 3 Blue Jays.
John Swaine harvests the soy beans in the Big Field. He says, with 63 inches of rain in 2009, more than an inch-a-week average, that was the 2nd wettest year since his father began keeping records in 1940, in spite of the August drought. He plans to harvest the other fields if the ground doesn’t thaw too much. In spite of being beaten down by heavy rains, winds of 2 powerful nor’easters, and then snow a foot deep, the harvest of these beans, at least in the Big Field, is as good as he can remember.
HEADIN’ HOME. Our count of 51 Turkey Vultures makes a nice bookend to the 55 we saw on the way down. Along the homebound route are 10 Red-tailed and a Sharp-shinned Hawk, 1 Bald Eagle, and 3 American Kestrels plus a few Snow Geese. Several of the redtails are perched along the edge of the forests along Route 301, waiting for roadkills (?).
The PERILS OF ENCOUNTERS WITH THE PRESS. On the Blackwater N.W.R. birdwalk of Dec. 6 I was surprised when a reporter from the Sunday Star (Easton Star Democrat) was among the attendees. His article on the walk appeared in the Sunday, January 3, 2010, issue, pp. A1 & A7. I thank cousin Laurie Driggs and neighbor/friend Nancy Lytell for making me aware of this. I think the refuge got some nice exposure, especially from his good shots of an adult Bald Eagle, a Great Blue Heron, some foraging Mallards, and a flock of flying Tundra Swans, less so with the photograph of me peering through a scope.
As so often happens several items in the article are incorrect or misleading. I did not say that 100 eagles nest at the refuge. I did not say ducks went into Kentuck Swamp because of the rains; I said they went into the adjacent impoundments which the Kentuck Swamp waters flow into. Why is a Great Blue Heron “native” when others were not so designated? Snow Geese do not arrive in January, they arrive in October and November. The article also made it sound as if I was still working. It was not a “bright yellow and gold finch” that sparked my interest in birds, it was a bright yellow goldfinch. Several other things I was supposed to have said come off sounding strange. But … that’s sports.
Best to all. – Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.
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