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Blackwater & Ferry Neck, Feb. 27-March 3, 2010: white pelicans, scoters + OT climate change (at end)

From:

Harry Armistead

Reply-To:

Harry Armistead

Date:

Thu, 4 Mar 2010 15:28:18 +0000

            FEBRUARY 27-MARCH 3, 2010, FERRY NECK & BLACKWATER N.W.R.
            SATURDAY, February 27.  136 Turkey Vultures on the way down plus 2 Bald Eagles right over Middletown, DE, and 3 over milepost 114 on Route 301.  Arrive 2:30, George and Laura Oppenheim already there.  Most snow, amazingly, is gone.  46, NW 5, fair.  George sees today a Cackling Goose, a Brown Creeper, some flickers, a Brown Thrasher, 3 adult Bald Eagles, 7 pintails in the cove with Canada Geese, and an adult male Sharp-shinned Hawk.  Laura finds an impressive antler with 4 points, the middle 2 tines c. 5-6”.  
            I do some scoping out to Irish Creek and see 25 Canvasbacks, 5 Red-breasted Mergansers, 70 Ruddy Ducks, 700 Canada Geese, and 2 Mute Swans.  Also on the back 40 today: an adult male Cooper’s Hawk.  2 Gray Squirrels.  10 deer.  Put out 50 lbs. of corn.  Full moon rises over the head of the cove and Woods 1 … well, almost full, will be full tomorrow, right now needs a little more shine on its lower left.  
            SUNDAY, February 28.  Egypt Road: 2 Northern Harriers, 2 Horned Larks, 2 American Kestrels.  
            Blackwater N.W.R. 7 A.M.- 1 P.M.  A bird walk with Norris Brock, Wayne Camard, Ellen & Tom Cimino, Julia & Michael Redmond, Pam Smith, and Levin Willey.  44 species.  Overcast with substantial flurries early becoming partly clear, 30-40, NW 5-10+, tidal waters low, fresh waters high, little snow left, some new skim ice in some of the ditches.  Beautiful flurries.  Chilly.
            Highlights: a distant Golden Eagle soaring with a Bald Eagle.  245 Ring-necked Ducks, as many as I’ve ever seen here, almost all in Pool 3A (or whatever the northernmost 3 pool is) with a few in Pool 1.  15 American White Pelicans in groupings of 1, 6 and 8.  55 Bald Eagles including 33 in sight simultaneously.  2 Fox Squirrels.  2 Sika Elk.  
            Also:  350 Tundra Swans, 900 Snow Geese, 20 Blue Geese, 10 Green-winged Teal, 110 American Wigeon, 70 Northern Pintails, 40 Northern Shovelers, 55 Common Mergansers, 8 Great Blue Herons (most in breeding plumage with yellow bills and nuptial plumage on their head, breast, and at the base of the wings and back), 1 Cooper’s Hawk, 6 Northern Harriers, 1 Killdeer, 1 American Coot, 30 Herring Gulls (2 of them with small Carp), 1 imm. Great Black-backed Gull (also with a small Carp), 1 kingfisher, 1 Hairy Woodpecker, 6 Tree Swallows, 6 Fish Crows, 2 bluebirds, and 800 Common Grackles. 
            American White Pelican lineup.  There is one returned again at Sewards after a long absence, where one was present January-November 2009.  I don’t know what happened to that bird after the big freeze but this one is in exactly the same location.  I’d say it’s the same, presumed flightless bird; perhaps it walked to where there was open water this winter (!?).  6 other pelicans are in 2 groups of 3 opposite variously Pools 3 and 5.  While we enjoy them a flock of 8 others comes in low from the south and certainly looks as if they are just arriving from … Virginia, North Carolina?  
            Several times the 14 birds on the Blackwater River rise and soar with great dignity, high, majestic, and impressive, putting in mind for all the world a great Francis Lee Jaques painting.  Often when these pelicans are at rest their bills are tucked in their back feathers, their black flight feathers are concealed, as are their orange-yellow legs, and it is therefore surprisingly hard to pick them out from among the flocks of Tundra Swans resting in the same area, although the pelis are more angular, blocky.  
            Back at Rigby’s Folly, 2 P.M. – dark only.  55 robins, 1 Sharp-shinned Hawk, 110 starlings, and 35 Red-winged Blackbirds plus 2 Gray Squirrels  Partly clear, NW 10+, 45 degrees F.
            MONDAY, March 4.  Did more yard work, cleaned up the driveway, napped in the sun on the lee side of some trees and Baccharis bushes.  Cut up branches giving us some firewood.  Fair, 37-52, NW 10-20, chilly and cold mostly.  “March came in like a lion, a whippin’ up the water in the bay” from the song in ‘Carousel.’  2 Black Vultures, 2 bluebirds, 1 Red-tailed Hawk.  Didn’t do much birding.  45 degrees at 6:30 P.M., 43 at 9:45 P.M.  At the corn: some White-throated Sparrows, a male Red-bellied Woodpecker that dives very aggressively at a female, and 3 Gray Squirrels, whose diverse antics never fail to amuse and entertain.  1 deer.  Beautiful, furry Red Fox at the bend of the driveway with a fine bushy tail and jet black forelegs.  In the ditch on the south side of Field 4, over 1000 feet long, a flow has started today in spite of its still being chockfull of snow and ice for much of its length.  As in the edges of the streets here in Philadelphia the water finds a way to begin the flow underneath it all.  
            TUESDAY, March 2.  Sit out at Lucy Point 2.5 hours, 12:45-3:15.  Very productive.  Overcast, calm or NW5, 44-43 degres F.  The sun often a diffuse silvery or golden disk visible dimly through the clouds.  15 deer at Holland Point.   Once Buffleheads go by in a courtship flight, 6 males on the case of one female.  Two workboats are dredging oysters; one is the ‘Aquaholic.’  Even after all this rain and snow the Big Field is firm enough so I bet I could drive over it, w/o 4WD.  Because of all of the snow, and its resulting yard chores, I haven’t been out to Lucy Point for a few weeks.  
            The mouth of the Choptank River is dead calm most of the time.  Out on the ‘tank are: 2460 Surf Scoters, 135 Long-tailed Ducks, 55 Common Goldeneyes, 40 Lesser Scaup, 20 Tundra Swans, 140 Buffleheads, 3 Red-breasted Mergansers, 1 Common Loon, 34 Herring Gulls (sometimes trying to kill the scoters), and 17 Horned Grebes.  There’s been a recent, slight influx of the grebes.  Almost all these waterfowl sit on the surface with little flight so these estimates in most cases are the result of just one slow scan left to right from up the Choptank as far as I can see to up Broad Creek.  
            Many of the scoters are close in.  Try as I might I see only surfs.  In this year of the Common Eider, sometimes hundreds at a time in NJ, one can hope to find one somewhere on the Chesapeake.  In 15 previous counts at Rigby’s Folly of 1000 Surf Scoters or more (range is from 1230 to 4000), prior to 2003, all were between the dates of March 9 and April 15, except for 1120 estimated on October 26, 1998.  Due to a computer crash in 2008 counts of them, for various reasons, since 2003 are scattered in the files that house my checklists and notes.
            Otherwise, this Tuesday, not feeling well, most of the time is spent reading with some continued cleanup of the yard and driveway.  In the cove are 1580 Canada Geese with 1600 more out on Irish Creek and 100 in front of Tranquility = a total of c. 3280, the most I’ve seen this year.  I believe the snows have brought some in from states north of here.  Also 40 Ruddy Ducks, 13 Myrtle Warblers, 35 Canvasbacks, a pair of American Wigeon.  Light rain late.  Some Ladybugs in the house, and a live mouse.   
            WEDNESDAY, March 3.  Close up the house and leave.  Overcast, raining, 37, NW 15, cold and raw.  Just plain nasty.  See a Sharp-shinned Hawk as we go out the drive.  3 Wild Turkeys sit on the pavement of the road in to the Thut’s place on Ferry Neck.  In John Swaine’s fields along Bellevue Road are c. 2,000 Canada Geese and 700 Ring-billed Gulls.  At the intersection of routes 481 X 305 (Hope) a field has 12 deer, 900 Snow and a few Blue geese.  The geese flush when 2 adult Bald Eagles fly over.  On the way north along 481 and 301 there are 1000s of other Canada Geese and Ring-billed Gulls.  A dead Woodchuck, having “rushed the season,” lies dead on the shoulder of the bridge just south of the Chester River.  As we motor north the rain stops, the ceiling lifts, and so do  89 Turkey Vultures.  The engine boils over just as we get within striking distance of home.  Carroll Sheppard rescues us.      
            THE ADVENT OF THE AMERICAN WHITE PELICAN.  Make yourself right at home big fella.  Until about the 1980s this massive species was close to accidental in the Middle Atlantic.  Here are the number of “old” records in various state or regional monographs published in the years indicated.  Stewart & Robbins, Maryland, 1958, 2 records (1 shot), 1 of them very vague.  Larner et al., Virginia, 1979, 4 records (3 of them shot) prior to 1979, all in the 1880s, more vagueness.  
            Hess et al., Delaware, 2000, 1 record prior to 1983.  Leck, New Jersey, 1984, 6 records prior to 1978.  Sibley, Cape May, 2nd ed., 1997, once in 1951 and then not again until 1982.  
            Rottenborn & Brinkley, Virginia, 2007, “Fairly rare but increasingly regular transient and winter visitor (30 Aug – 10 May); rare summer visitor.  Four records in the late 1800s but few additional records until the late 1970s.  Recorded every year since 1978 … one built and sat on an eggless nest in the Fisherman Island Brown Pelican colony in Jun 1995.” (p. 54)  Jared Sparks and I saw 2 immatures in mid-summer once in the Brown Pelican colony out on Holland Island.  
            I can’t find my copy of the comprehensive NJ book (has atlas and much other information), probably on loan to someone.    
            Many non-birders continue to be amazed AMWPs are seen in mid-winter, thinking all pelicans are tropical birds, not realizing that white pelicans breed as far north as northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan.  The closest breeding area is Wisconsin (fide Dave Brinker).  It was a great experience for my family to once watch a big kettle of them circling high over the vast spruce forest north of Grand Rapids, Manitoba.  
            Some of “our” birds may be from the buildup in their numbers, also recent, wintering in North Carolina, including maximum counts at Bodie-Pea Island CBC (117) and Mattamuskeet CBC (64).  Still, I can’t help thinking that they “should” be at places such as the Bolivar Flats, Everglades, or Sanibel.  It was remarkable to see a couple of dozen of them a few years ago sitting on the ice in the middle of a heavy snowstorm at Blackwater.   
            Best to all. – Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.
 
            “I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  In fact, the crisis is growing because we are continuing to dump 90 millions tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere – as if it were an open sewer.”
            “It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate.  In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skeptics may not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law.”
            “But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes.  What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged.” …
            “January was seen as unusually cold in much of the United States.  Yet from a global perspective, it was the second-hottest January since surface temperatures were first measured 130 years ago.”
            “Similarly, even though climate deniers have speciously argued for several years that there has been no warming in the last decade, scientists confirmed last month that the last 10 years were the hottest decade since modern records have been kept.”
            “The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere – thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States.  Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorms.” …
            “Over the years, as science has become clearer and clearer, some industries and companies whose business plans are dependent on unrestrained pollution of the atmospheric commons have become ever more entrenched.  They are ferociously fighting against the mildest regulation – just as tobacco companies blocked constraints on the marketing of cigarettes for four decades after science confirmed the link of cigarettes to diseases of the lung and heart.” …
            “Some news media organizations now present showmen masquerading as political thinkers who package hatred and divisiveness as entertainment … Their most consistent theme is to label as “socialist” any proposal to reform exploitive behavior in the marketplace.”  
            -Al Gore, “We can’t wish away climate change,” New York Times, February 28, 2010, page 11, Week in Review. 		 	   		  
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