FERRY NECK & the ELLIOTT ISLAND ROAD, January 22-25, 2010. Liz & Harry Armistead.
Friday, January 22. On the way down stop to look, unsuccessfully for the 3rd time, for the Queen Annes County Northern Shrike, in spite of a pleasant walk with Maren and Dan Small, who it was a pleasure to meet; on our walk we see 14 smart-looking White-crowned Sparrows, 3 Bald Eagles, 3 Red-tailed Hawks, and 2 Northern Harriers. Trip total of 98 Turkey Vultures. We’re at Rigby’s Folly only from c. 4:30 until dark, NW5, 41-38, fair. See a Gray Squirrel. After an absence of a while, due to the ice I guess, a pair of Mute Swans has returned to the cove. Run into Jimmy Olszewski, who has left us a cooler full of venison, a large box of corn on-on-the-cob, and a bottle of red wine.
Saturday, January 23. 14 House Sparrows, actively foraging right next to my car, at 5:24 A.M. at the Cambridge Wawa, well before first light. Passer domesticus wawaensis/crepuscularensis.
ELLIOTT ISLAND ROAD, 6 A.M. – 6 P.M. clear becoming fair then mostly cloudy, 30-40 degrees F., winds NE 10-15, high tide in the early morning a good foot above normal, low in the afternoon, still a little ice in the ditches.
Ran into Anna Urciolo and Ross Geredien, spent some of this time birding with them. All this business, very misleading, about there being so many millions of birders. Today there are just 3 of us (plus a fellow with a huge lens who stayed in his car photographic Dunlin at McCready’s Creek) as opposed to 26 trucks, all trailering boats, belonging to hunters. Take a look at the Choptank River bridge at the height of the fishing season; you’ll see dozens of people fishing.
Also, take a gander at Ted Williams’ excellent and incisive (as usual) article in Audubon, January-February 2010, pp. 26-33, “Incite: no pay, no say,” which has much insight into the hunting-fishing-trapping lobby, funding for state fish and wildlife agencies, and more. The hooks and bullets crowd still has much of the say in how things go but there’s been a great growth in influence for a more general, inclusive environmental purview, which will benefit anglers and hunters, too, whether they want to admit it or not. Most of them won’t.
82 miles by car, 1 mile on foot. 67 species. Things do not fall in place with landbirds in the morning, or at any other time, so I forego an all-out effort that has, on other mid-winter days, resulted in 80 or more species. Best, although not a personal best for me here, are 16 waterfowl and 8 raptor species.
Route: all of E.I.R. plus Kraft Neck Road, Henrys Cross Road, Vienna, and the Route 50 borrow pit. I do not check out Savanna Lake. Kraft Neck Road is a lovely 3.1 mile stretch without a single house, has huge fields surrounded by large woodlands as well as a wooded swamp where prothonotaries and Barred Owls breed. It is unpaved. Before sunrise it is frozen solid with hard, rough, deep ruts. Late in the afternoon it is completely thawed, wet, and sticky – a great, sloshy mess - the car looking as if it has been in a Redneck festival after today’s 2 passages. The Route 50 borrow pit, which sometimes has Ring-necked Ducks and coots, does not have a single waterbird today. Water there is a good foot+ above normal.
Best counts: 44 Bald Eagles, 3,350 Ruddy Ducks, 65 Hooded Mergansers (a lot for here; all are at Gadwall Bend in the early morning, later in the day they’re none there), 41 Greater Yellowlegs, 39 Great Blue Herons (mostly seen from Gadwall Bend), and 18 Virginia Rails. Circa 3,030 of the ruddies - the little dears - are in a massive raft best seen from the road out to McCready’s Point with a few Canvasbacks and Lesser Scaup mixed in. Some of the eagles are pairs engaged in skyplay very high and a great distance, esp. to the west of Drawbridge, where 10 are in sight simultaneously.
OWLS: All are hard-eared, not easy to come by today, 1 each of screech, horned, and Barred owl. 2 Short-eared Owls seen tangling with each other when it’s almost dark, c. 5:45 P.M.
Also: 11 Mute Swans (still some left; these are all in the deep marsh, somewhat safer from agency officials packing 22 silencers). 8 Gadwall, 8 American Wigeon, 180 American Black Ducks, 880 Canvasbacks (seen from EIR in Fishing Bay), 145 Lesser Scaup, 1 male Surf Scoter, 22 Common Goldeneyes, 3 Common Mergansers, 6 Wild Turkeys, 2 Common Loons, 8 Black-crowned Night Herons, 122 Turkey Vultures, 9 Northern Harriers, 3 adult Red-shouldered Hawks, 2 Clapper Rails, 2 Lesser Yellowlegs, 180 Dunlin, 1 American Woodcock, 1 Pileated Woodpecker, 45 Fish Crows, 4 Brown-headed Nuthatches, 1 Winter Wren (audible but barely visible within a low, dense tangle of honeysuckle; very, cryptic, mouselike behavior), 23 juncos, and 7 meadowlarks.
AMONG THE MISSING: Redhead, Red-breasted Merganser, Killdeer, Wilson’s Snipe, Mourning Dove, any woodpeckers except the 1 pileated, Blue Jay, titmouse, robin, Field, Savannah & Fox sparrows, Boat-tailed Grackle, and goldfinch.
Mammals: only a Gray Squirrel in Vienna and a Fox Squirrel 0.3 miles north of 4135 Elliott Island Road on the east side near my favorite ditch. This ditch, fed by 2 other ditches on the west side of the road plus a small woodland stream there, and 2 additional ditches on the road’s east side, flows off to the east to the Nanticoke River. Today it is full of minnows. There are more Muskrat lodges in the E.I.R. marshes than I can remember ever seeing there, big ones.
Many of today’s Turkey Vultures are patronizing the recently deposited, large manure piles in the fields.
Sunday, January 24. At mid-day my head cold with sore throat, post-nasal drip, headache, and surfs-up-in-the-sinuses hits but we’re able to look around a little before then. A Sharp-shinned Hawk, 3 deer (does), a Gray Squirrel, and a Red Fox crossing Ferry Neck Road going from Woods 3 to Woods 4. Out at Lucy Point Liz and I sit and do a sea watch for 1.5 hours, 10:30 A.M. until noon; it’s dead calm and scoping the glassy surface is productive. Calm becoming E5 at the end, 42 degrees F., overcast:
285 Surf Scoters, 215 Buffleheads, 290 Long-tailed Ducks, 80 Common Goldeneye, 4 Common Loons, 3 male Red-breasted Mergansers, 1 American Black Duck, 810 Canada Geese (more present but are obscured since they’re on the other side of Wooden Point), 5 Canvasbacks, 12 Tundra Swans (only 1 a young; production seems poor), 1 Horned Grebe, and 40 Lesser Scaup. A group of 115 other Canvasbacks is actively diving at the head of the cove.
While burning some paper trash in the Big Field I see 2 Pileated Woodpeckers fly right overhead, only about the 6th time we’ve hosted 2 here in a day. 41 Myrtle Warblers, an exact count, as a small flight streams by the shoreline out by the dock.
An adult Great Black-backed gull is eating something, perhaps a dead Surf Scoter, and is joined by 2 other adults and an immature. An adult Herring Gull chases an adult Bald Eagle that is carrying something. See 5 adult Bald Eagles in sight simultaneously: 2 in an oak at Holland Point, 1 “upstream” a couple of 100 yards from there on the north side of Irish Creek, and 2 on the spindle at the mouth of Broad Creek, plus an immature. Six seems to be the 2nd highest count here in winter, the highest 8 on February 27, 1999.
OFFSHORE HIERARCHY. The commoner offshore ducks seem to conform to a hierarchy with respect to the distance at which they habitually haunt the “broad waters.” Buffleheads are closest to shore, followed by Common Goldeneyes, Surf Scoters, and, farthest out, Long-tailed Ducks. But sometimes the middle 2 flip their respective distances.
Monday, January 25. After a terrible night with little sleep and much discomfort we decide to return to Philadelphia a day early. Torrential rains until noon or so accompanied by gale force winds. The fields are a sodden morass of mud with huge areas of standing water. Tidal water, high tide is c. 10 A.M., creeps up onto the east side of the lawn; shades of Hurricane Isabel. Tide is more than a foot above normal. Going out the drive there’s a Sharp-shinned Hawk. Liz hears a Red Fox right in the yard last night uttering its rather horrid calls. Also, at c. 12:35 A.M., she hears several random shots to the south followed by 5 rapid semi-automatic bursts, perhaps a poacher. Six Ruddy Ducks in the cove out a little ways past the dock. Our trip count heading north is 101 Turkey Vultures. I do not feel well enough to make a 4th attempt to see the Northern Shrike.
Best to all. – Harry Armistead.
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