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Subject:

Taylor's Island & Ferry Neck, March 7-10, 2010: swans and scoters.

From:

Harry Armistead

Reply-To:

Harry Armistead

Date:

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:27:54 +0000

            TAYLOR’S ISLAND & FERRY NECK, MD, MARCH 7-10, 2010.  A period of above average temperatures, light winds or calm, and, for the most part, sunny.  Beautiful days.  Observations are at our property, Rigby’s Folly on Ferry Neck, unless otherwise stated.  Liz & Harry Armistead.
            SUNDAY, MARCH 7.  Present only from 5 P.M. until dark.  Fair, 55-49, calm, low tide.  On the way down: 88 Turkey Vultures.  2 Bald Eagles along Route 301 at milepost 114.  3 Wild Turkeys somewhere along Route 481, 11 more at their favorite field e. of St. Michaels next to Route 33, and, finally, 38 in a group south of Bellevue Road opposite John Swaine’s farm, another field edge they favor.  
            An ad. Bald Eagle at Frog Hollow.  Get out to Lucy Point before sunset and on the Choptank River mouth are 2510 Surf Scoters, 6 goldeneyes, 40 Ruddy Ducks, a Common Loon, a Horned Grebe, 4 Red-breasted Mergansers, 65 Buffleheads, calling Long-tailed Ducks far offshore, and zero Tundra Swans.  There is a considerable flight of Canada Geese headed out - they’re GONE - totaling c. 610.  One flock has a single Cackling Goose.  
            It has continued to dry out since our last visit.  Almost all of the snow has melted except where big piles were deposited by ploughing.  For dinner: our traditional celebration of the coming of spring - shad roe with bacon and asparagus, rice, a salad, and cherry pie with whipped cream, preceded by a stiff, 2+ ounce gin martini.
            MONDAY, MARCH 8.  An Eastern Cottontail at Royal Oak at 4:19 A.M.  In Cambridge at 5:03 A.M., well before first natural light, 4 starlings and 6 House Sparrows are foraging at the Wawa.  I’ve seen House Sparrows do this in darkness many times but never before starlings.  
            TAYLOR’S ISLAND, 5:30 A.M.- 5 P.M.  41 miles by car, 1 on foot.  Clear, calm much of the day with NW winds sometimes of 5-10 m.p.h., tide sequence – high to low.  There’s been much damage to the American Hollies by the heavy snows, especially in the Robinson Neck and Punch Island roads woodlands.  Today’s efforts also include a pseudopod extension up Route 16 between Slaughter Creek and the east side of Parsons Creek.  The totals below include birds found in those areas, too.  72 species.  
            MORNING FLIGHT.  In spite of the chilly morning with calm winds becoming a somewhat adverse NW 10 m.p.h. it is sunny and there is a flight going on, which ends about 10 A.M.  These species are seen migrating north.  Most but not all of these numbers represent northbound birds:  Canada Goose 2375, Cackling Goose 2, Tundra Swan 585, Northern Pintail 12, Lesser Scaup 119, Horned Grebe 37, Bonaparte’s Gull 4, Ring-billed Gull 285, Herring Gull 57, Tree Swallow 1, Red-winged Blackbird 290, and Common Grackle 310.  However, many of the scaup, including at least 3 Greaters, are feeding and resting in Slaughter Creek.  Many of the grebes are flying up the Bay in groups of 2s and 3s. 
            Other than the flight: Wood Duck 4.  Canvasback 29.  Redhead 32.  Surf Scoter 2520 (2120 estimated from Taylor’s Island Family Campground).  Long-tailed Duck 210.  Red-throated Loon 1.  Common Loon 11.  Pied-billed Grebe 1.  Northern Gannet 1, an adult flying south well offshore.  Great Blue Heron, remarkably, only 2.  Turkey Vulture 33 (some may have been migrating).  Bald Eagle, only 7.  Red-shouldered Hawk 1.  Killdeer 37 (seen in 7 places).  Dunlin 22.  Forster’s Tern 6 (seen in 3 places).  
            Hairy Woodpecker 2.  Eastern Phoebe 2.  Fish Crow only 4.  Horned Lark 2.  Brown-headed Nuthatch 10 (4 places).  Eastern Bluebird 18 (all of them paired up, several males singing).  Hermit Thrush 5 (4 places).  Brown Thrasher 1 (sings continuously for c. 10 minutes).  American Pipit 5.  Cedar Waxwing 9.  Pine Warbler, only 1, a singing male.  House Finch 6.    
            OWLS: only 1 each of horned and screech.
            MISSING, OR NEARLY SO.  Sparrows very scarce.  I only see 7 Songs and NO others although one spot has 6 juncos.  I try for rails for c. 45 minutes with no luck but even on a warm, clear, calm June night Taylor’s is not a prime rail place.  Other misses: kingfisher, meadowlark, and goldfinch.  No accipiters or harrier. No gallinaceous species but in the recent past I’ve had good luck here with quail, turkeys, and pheasants.  No Ospreys or Laughing Gulls yet; I didn’t expect any.
            NON-AVIAN TAXA.  1 Sika Elk, 2 deer, 1 Gray Squirrel, 2 Chorus Frogs, 2 Painted Turtles (hauled out on the edge of the little pond just north of the entrance to Taylor’s Island Family Campground, an establishment that Erskine Caldwell would have loved - it gives new meaning to the phrase cheek-by-jowl), one unID’d bat foraging out in the open in broad daylight, Hooper’s Neck Road, 2 P.M.
            At Blackwater N.W.R. c. 5:15 P.M. a brief drive through reveals 100s of Tundra Swans, 40 Common Mergansers, 100s of Snow Geese way out on the Blackwater River, Ring-necked Ducks in Pool 1, and 5 American White Pelicans, including the one at Sewards.  That bird continues to maintain station there but is perhaps a bit out of sorts because there is a gillnetter in his boat on the Little Blackwater River, so the pelican has retreated a few hundred feet to the west, regaining its composure atop a Muskrat lodge.  
            Back at Rigby’s Folly at day’s end, 6-6:15 P.M.: 6 deer, 1 ad. Bald Eagle, 2 Gray Squirrels.  A few minutes earlier, 3 Wild Turkeys at John Swaine’s.    
            TUESDAY, MARCH 9.  In recovery from yesterday’s workout.  Clear, SW 5-calm-SW5 again, 40-61, 56 at 6:45 P.M.  Take it easy.  Read some of Mountbatten by Philip Ziegler; massive but good biography about a fascinating man.  Am a slow reader; this book will take me weeks to finish.  Finally venture forth late in the morning.  
            90 Canvasbacks, 50 Ruddy Ducks, 1 Red-shouldered Hawk, 1 Brown Thrasher, 1 Fox Sparrow, 2 Gray Squirrels, 1 deer, and a Great Horned Owl calls, just once, at 6:30 P.M.  Out on the Choptank River mouth are 1940 Surf Scoters, 165 Buffleheads, 10 Common Goldeneyes, 5 Red-breasted Mergansers, 40 Herring Gulls, 6 Horned Grebes, 3 Common Loons, and 330 Tundra Swans.  
            While Liz and I sit there in the glorious sun c. 440 pochards, in 5 flocks, pass rapidly to the north, far out and up high; I suspect they are Canvasbacks.  We hear but do not see Long-tailed Ducks.  
            After resting and napping inside I head out the drive a short ways to enjoy the sunset.  Right about at sunset a good flight of Tundra Swans begins, c. 685 heading north in the next 20 minutes, in full cry, perhaps a dozen flocks.  There is nothing more stirring and thrilling than seeing these great white birds calling to each other as they launch into the gathering dusk for their long, heroic flight to Alaska, or the Yukon, or Nunavut, or Baffin Island … somewhere up there in the Far North.  Wish them Godspeed, and fair winds.  
            Look forward to seeing (and, especially, hearing) them when they return next November.  The BNA account (BNA 89, 1994, 20pp., by Limpert & Earnst), while good, does not in my opinion do their rich vocalization repertoire full justice.  685 is, I think, our 6th highest property count but well off previous highs such as 3130 on March 20, 1999 (also a dusk flight, and late in the spring for so many) and 2715 on November 5, 1995.  Perhaps today, March 9, is their big flight day regionally?  
            In the evening a reprise of our shad roe and bacon dinner last Sunday.      
            WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10.  44-55, mostly cloudy becoming overcast, calm, low tide.  Leave for Philadelphia at 12:30 after lunch.  
            In the cove: 102 Canvasbacks, 4 Lesser Scaup, 17 Ruddy Ducks, 3 Red-breasted Mergansers (2 males, 1 female), 11 Buffleheads, 4 Mallards, and 20 Canada Geese.  Usually the cans and ruddies are seen far out on Irish Creek and not in the cove.  After last evening’s big swan flight, I see just 2 small groups today, of 7 and 12, headed north.           Quick scan out at Lucy Point reveals c. 1070 Surf Scoters, 7 Horned Grebes, 1 Common Loon, and c. 115 Buffleheads.  Glassy surface but the haze cuts in after a mile or so, limits what can be counted.  2 adult Bald Eagles at Frog Hollow; we suspect an active nest is nearby.  It’s dried out enough so that we can drive across the Big Field w/o 4WD.  
            Finish dispatching, cutting up, and removing 2 medium-sized Black Locusts that have been leaning precariously over the NW section of the lawn for a couple of years.  Clear most of a fallen Red Cedar and some Wax Myrtle that have been obstructing the view at the bend of the driveway.  The cuttings make the start of a nice brush pile plus some small firewood logs.   
            HEADIN’ HOME.  Some Chorus Frogs calling east of Royal Oak off of Rt. 329.  Eight deer in a field south of Rt. 33 and west of Easton.  A male Green-winged Teal and 6 Mallards in my favorite pond just n. of the routes 481 X 309 T-junction.  This small wet area, sometimes completely dry in summer, is usually good later in the spring for more teal and some snipe with dozens of shorebirds in May if the water level, or lack of it, is just right.  Five Snow and 300 Canada Geese in the pond just s. of Hope and e. of 481 plus a Red Fox in the middle of a big field 1 mile s. of there.  
            On Route 301: a d.o.r. Barred Owl at Mile 97.5, an ad. Bald Eagle perched right next to the road and only c. 15’ up in an oak at mile 103.5, attracted by roadkill?  I come across roadkill Barred and Eastern Screech owls, somewhere, about once a year in my Delmarva wanderings but very rarely see Great Horned Owls that have come to such an end.  In all cases… may they requiescat in pavement.  A roadkill ad. Snow Goose on the Route 301 e. shoulder right at the MD/DE line.  
            A big, fat Woodchuck surveying its domain from the entrance to its burrow at the on ramp to Route 1 e. of Middletown, DE.  Along the Easton bypass there is now much, fresh, excavated earth outside the burrows of these “furred bulldozers”; their spring has started though it can’t really be said that they therefore have a spring in their step.  Trip Turkey Vulture total, a somewhat low 77.  Heading north we find 5 roadkill Skunks along Route 301; normally we do not see (or smell) any.  “Roll up the window and hold your nose/That ain’t no rose/Dead skunk lyin’ in the middle of the road.”
            WASTE MANAGEMENT.  A big, green truck we see in Middletown Wednesday belonging to this company proclaims: “Our landfills provide over 17,000 acres of wildlife habitat.”  www.wm.com  Perhaps so but I suspect the “wildlife” may be starlings, crows, vultures, and gulls plus assorted rodentia.  However, their website seems impressive.  But I do not spend enough time navigating it to discover what’s up with the 17,000 acres.    
            The PERILS OF BEING PUBLISHED.  One can perhaps imagine my abject horror when a recent bird book review of mine was published with the words “image” and “images” appearing 3 times each in the last 2 paragraphs.  With dread I checked my original submission and was relieved to find that it used each of those words only once.  I often tell people not to assume that what they read is what a writer actually wrote in his or her original.  
            WANTED:  a coffee mug emblazoned with an adorable chickadee and “Wanted, for the misappropriation of squirrel seed.”              Best to all. – Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.   		 	   		  
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