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Bishop's Head, Blackwater & Ferry Neck, March 14-18, 2010: 28 white pelicans.

From:

Harry Armistead

Reply-To:

Harry Armistead

Date:

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:56:04 +0000

            MARCH 14-18, 2010, BISHOP’S HEAD, FERRY NECK & BLACKWATER N.W.R.  Increasingly warm and mostly sunny days with mild winds and higher than normal tides, and, fortunately, no rain except some on Monday.  No egrets yet.  Unless otherwise noted these observations are at Rigby’s Folly.
            SUNDAY, MARCH 14.  151 Turkey Vultures on the way down.  Stop at Chino Farms to try, unsuccessfully (there’s no other way for me), for the Northern Shrike, for the 5th time.  While there we hear Spring Peepers and see 4 deer plus 2 Bald Eagles, 3 Black Vultures, 2 flickers, 2 Red-tailed Hawks, 40 Canada Geese, a kestrel, a female harrier, 21 Turkey Vultures, 2 bluebirds, 2 Ospreys, a meadowlark, and 5 cardinals.  At the 1st pond south and east of routes 301 X 213 are 55 Ring-necked Ducks and 2 Gadwalls.  There are c. 200 Tundra Swans in a field west of Route 213 c. 1 mile south of there.  A Bald Eagle at Skipton Creek.  Dinner at Chesapeake Landing west of St. Michaels where we run into Paul & Priscilla Thut and their friends.  The place is out of dry vermouth so I skip the martini and have a whiskey sour.     
            MONDAY, MARCH 15.  Overcast, light rain early in the morning, again in the afternoon, NW5-20+, 46-48, raw.  1 adult Bald Eagle, 7 deer, 1 Gray Squirrel.  A day of doing chores.  Cut down 45 irreparably bent Loblolly Pines that are leaning over the Olszewski Trails.  The Olszewskis’ goose pit blind in the Big Field looks like a filled bathtub.  Clean out 159 feet of the ditch that drains water westwards into the Waterthrush Pond.  A few Spring Peepers and Chorus Frogs call from Woods 2 and the east side of Field 3.  See 4 Wild Turkeys near Royal Oak, and 5 in John Swaine’s field.  Tyler comes to empty our septic tank at 8 A.M., a process that takes them 40 minutes.  
            TUESDAY, MARCH 16.  Overcast becoming clear, 46-62, N5-15-5-calm at sunset.  1 Sharp-shinned Hawk, 3 Black Vultures, 2 adult Bald Eagles, 6 Red-tailed Hawks (in sight simultaneously), 1 ad. male Northern Harrier, 19 White-throated Sparrows, 4 Song Sparrows, 40 Canvasbacks, 145 Ruddy Ducks, only 250 Canada Geese, 45 Buffleheads, 10 Horned Grebes, 2 Great Blue Herons, 45 Surf Scoters, 105 Lesser Scaup, 12 robins, 1 each of flicker, downy & redbelly, only 1 Common Loon, 90 Herring Gulls, and 54 Fish Crows.  Not one Tundra Swan.  A pair of bluebirds inspects the nesting box in Field 4.  
            Find a 3-point antler next to the hedgerow on the north side of Field 4.  Southern Leopard Frogs, rattling away, Spring Peepers, and Chorus Frogs are calling.  Much of the time the Choptank River mouth is windy and with a blinding, burnished gold from the intense spring sun, making locating waterbirds out difficult.  There is a beautiful Mourning Cloak in flight by the Waterthrush Pond, the first butterfly of the year.  See a Gray Squirrel, 7 deer, a Muskrat (steaming along the marsh edge NW of the dock), and a Red Fox.  Cut down 4 Red Cedars that are either bent or else all the way down along the Choptank River trail.    
            WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17.  Day of the living froggie.  Any early spring (late winter, actually) day with 4 frog, 3 owl, 3 turtle, 2 rail, and 1 butterfly species is a good ‘un.  13 deer between Bellevue Road and Royal Oak c. 4:29 A.M.  At the Cambridge Wawa 2 of the “3 Stinkers” are already foraging at exactly 5 A.M., almost 2.5 hours before sunrise: 7 House Sparrows and 2 European Starlings.  Pigeons still sleep in.
            Southern Dorchester County, 5:45 A.M. – 5:45 P.M.  Clear and delightfully sunny, winds calm or else W or NW <5 m.p.h., 35-55, tides way above normal, many roads flooded with salty Bay water, ponds and impoundments very high due to excessive rains and snows, all year.  101 birding miles by car.  Before 1st light the stars are brilliant and the Milky Way easily seen.  Some slight, small areas of fog before dawn.  In the pre-dawn darkness - when things almost always seem worse than they really are - it looks as if a mile or so of Shorter’s Wharf Road is submerged, so I scrap my plan to spend all day in extreme southern Dorchester.   
            BLACKWATER N.W.R., central-main refuge area, 5:45- noon.  The woods on the south side of Wildlife Drive is flooded with tidal water right up to the road, reminiscent of how things were compliments of Hurricane Isabel.  From the abundant recent rainfalls the “current” in various roadside ditches is a good 3 m.p.h., much of it coming out of Kentuck Swamp producing frothy, sudsy, surface stuff where the effluent ends.  This water is destined for Pools 3A and 5A I’d guess.   
            BEST are at least 28 American White Pelicans, flying, preening, or resting in several areas, including Pool 3B, and 1260 Tundra Swans (they didn’t all leave the evening of March 9, when many in the region saw or heard them moving out).  It’s always nice to see all 9 of the regularly-occurring dabbling duck species. 
            105 Ring-necked Ducks, 230 Snow & 4 Blue geese, 9 American Coots, 3 Ospreys, 4 Forster’s Terns (sitting on the Sewards Christmas tree reef), 1 Double-crested Cormorant, 40 shovelers, 1 male Blue-winged Teal, 12 wigeon, 30 Green-winged Teal, 4 black ducks, 4 Wood Ducks, 40 Mallards, 6 Gadwalls, 40 pintails, 2 Hooded Mergansers, 11 Ruddy Ducks, 21 Dunlin, 8 Greater Yellowlegs, 2 Killdeer, and 3 Laughing Gulls (in good voice). 
            6 Brown-headed Nuthatches (found at 3 places), 1 imm. White-crowned Sparrow (at the Visitors Center feeders), 1 junco, and 30 Bald Eagles.  Several Great Blue Herons flush from the Marsh Edge Trail woods at treetop level as I drive by, acting as if they may have in mind nesting there.  Some used to nest just across the road.  A surprise is a resplendent cock Ring-necked Pheasant standing on the road shoulder at Gum Swamp.
            1 each of screech, horned, and Barred owls.  Nine cars with anglers are parked on the Sewards causeway.  One fellow reels in a small catfish.
            HERPTILES venture forth.  Good choruses of Southern Leopard Frogs, Spring Peepers, Chorus Frogs, and Wood Frogs (Pool 1).  The Chorus Frogs seem especially attracted to rather stagnant, exposed watery areas where there is a growth of what I call Wire Grass.  Sunning themselves: 4 Red-bellied Sliders and 11 Painted Turtles.  On the Sewards causeway is a half-grown, roadkill Diamondback Terrapin.  Locally many call turtles “turkles.”   
            MAMMALS:  3 Fox and 1 Gray squirrel, 1 Sika Elk (I am driving slowly but come within 3-4 feet of hitting it anyway), 1 Red Fox, 3 Eastern Cottontails.  During the course of the day I see 4 dead Sika Elk, 2 of them roadkills.  North of the Sewards causeway there are what seem to be Muskrat lodges … c. 145 of them.  The local Fox Squirrels are so pale and gray they deserve the moniker “Gray Ghost” every bit as much as the lovely adult male Northern Harriers do.  Once a Fox and a Gray squirrel are foraging right next to each other and seem to be keeping their distance - no hostility or interaction at all, in contrast to the halls of Congress. 
            BISHOP’S HEAD, the Karen Noonan Education Center of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.  Much of the surrounding marshlands is a unit of Blackwater N.W.R.  The Noonan Center is the end of the line - can’t go any farther south anywhere in the county, except by boat.  From the dock, 1.9 miles to the southwest, is the Great Blue Heron colony on Fin Creek of Bloodsworth Island.  Even at this distance 38 great blues are easily visible through the scope, standing on their nests on platforms erected by the Navy c. 10 years ago.  Next to Fin Creek there is a small, armored vehicle up on the sod bank; it wasn’t there last year.  Perhaps Ospreys will nest on top of it. 
            Complete List:  2 American Oystercatchers, 245 Surf Scoters, 60 Buffleheads, 25 Common Goldeneyes, 22 Long-tailed Ducks, 1 Red-throated & 5 Common loons (1 of them dealing with a Hogchoker), 4 Horned Grebes, 2 Great Black-backed & 7 Herring gulls, 4 Turkey & 1 Black vulture, 1 Slate-colored Junco, the great blues, 2 American Black Ducks, 2 Northern Harriers, 1 male Boat-tailed Grackle, 8 Canada Geese, 4 Bald Eagles, 2 Virginia (1 well-seen as it flushes at 20 feet) & 1 Clapper rail, 1 Northern Flicker, 2 Killdeer, 1 European Starling, and, very surprising way out here, a Hairy Woodpecker.  Almost as surprising is a lusty chorus of Southern Leopard Frogs, croaking away from the piney hammock just west of the center’s entrance. 
            The rough road in to the center is 1.65 miles, and mostly submerged by the well-above-normal tide, which rises during the time I’m there, 1-3 P.M.  Schools of minnows - countless thousands of the small fishes - streak out of the way of my car.  Where else can you sometimes see Blue Crab roadkill?  In the distance, down towards Deal Island, 4 Skipjacks are underway; too bad it is by power not sail.  Next to the center building, with its solar panels, is a large Fig bush, apparently thriving from the southern exposure.  
            The Noonan Center is named after a young woman who was killed in the Lockerbie, Scotland, Libyan terrorist plane explosion.  Today there are dozens of Alexandria school students who are about to be taken out to Okahanikan Cove to pull pots full of Bay creatures.  It is a pleasure to sit on the dock to scan for waterbirds, eat my sandwich in the sun, and listen to the enthusiastic banter of the kids (and the Long-tailed Ducks), who have just retrieved a Winter Jellyfish and some shrimp.  They’ll never forget this field trip.  They’ve just completed a marsh walk, and their resulting wet clothing hangs triumphantly from the porch railings in the sunshine.  Clear, NW5, 54 degrees F., tide rising.
            “Terrapin Sand Point/and Okahanikan Cove/names alone are good.” - from ‘Chesapeake haiku.’  
            CROCHERON.  Not much, just a few Buffleheads and, on the jetties, some Herring and Great Black-backed gulls.  The piling that always has an active Osprey nest (and a House Sparrow nest inside the side of the Osprey nest) has been removed.
            FALLINS COVE, Bishop Head (the town).  3 Hooded Mergansers and 4 Green-winged Teal.  An unID’d anglewing swoops around the car, then disappears to the north, not permitting an identification.  At this right angle turn I once saw a Clapper Rail with its coal black chicks.
            CEDAR CREEK ROAD.  Perhaps the most beautiful, remote, marshiest road in the county.  Quite a sandy road but firm today even after all the rain, snow, and high tides this year.  It’s just over 2.0 miles long.  Not a single house, and it ends at Cedar Creek, where there’s nothing but a very primitive launching area.  The marshes on the road’s north side have been burned this year, out 100 yards or so from the road.  3:45-4:45 P.M.  
            Not much: 1 male Boat-tailed Grackle, 6 Greater Yellowlegs, 12 American Black Ducks, a male Mallard consorting with a female American Black Duck, 7 Turkey Vultures, 3 Bald Eagles, 3 Northern Harriers,, 1 singing Carolina Chickadee, 2 Wood Ducks, 1 male Red-winged Blackbird, and a big chorus of Southern Leopard Frogs back in the piney woods for the first mile or so past the road’s entrance.  Much of the surrounding area belongs to Chesapeake Audubon.  Good.  
            ANDREWS ROAD X ANDREWS ROAD intersection (this is confusing because there’s no sign indicating that on one side, just north of this “intersection,” Andrews Road becomes Robbins Road).  Out in a field a Turkey Vulture and imm. Bald Eagle are dining on a dead Sika Elk.  Seem to be getting along O.K. but then the eagle seizes the corpse in its bill and drags the entire package away from the TV.  
            LAKESVILLE ROAD (Route 36) X Edgar Road at the “Big Bend”: 5 Greater Yellowlegs in a flooded field (actually, all fields are flooded today).
            EGYPT ROAD.  9 Wild Turkeys.  
            BIRDSONG TODAY listed in order from most often heard to least: robin, titmouse, Red-winged Blackbird, Carolina Wren, Mourning Dove (not a singer but calling nonetheless), bluebird, Pine Warbler, meadowlark, chickadee.  In addition woodpeckers are heard more today than at any time this year, both drumming and calling. 
            FROG SONG TODAY, in the same declining order: Chorus Frog, Southern Leopard Frog, Spring Peeper, Wood Frog.
            THESE PARTS of the county must be some of the most remote in Maryland.  There’s 3 major components: 1- pure Loblolly Pine forests, especially hammocks surrounded by saltmarsh, 2- the saltmarsh per se, primarily vast tracts of pure Juncus roemerianus, and, finally, 3- big stretches of open bay and estuaries, with not much else other than meandering tidal guts, a few low, wet fields, and the depauperate houselots.  To drive along Toddville Road is to hope there is an Andrew Wyeth or Walker Evans to celebrate the wan beauty of the abandoned houses and old churches.  
            I used to haphazardly photograph some of those, when the fancy struck, back in the 1960s and 1970s.  Some of the yards are so full of defunct vehicles, machinery, refrigerators, and other appliances that the place out-Appalachias Appalachia.  The birdlife here, in spite of the wild allure of extreme south Dorchester, is equally depauperate.     
            Return to Rigby’s Folly late in the daylight period.  2 Gray Squirrels are the welcoming committee.  Up the road in one of John Swaine’s fields is an impressive group of 71 Wild Turkeys.  
            THURSDAY, MARCH 18. Leave at 11 A.M.  See 4 Gray Squirrels.  Dead calm, sunny, and warm.  Out on the Choptank River mouth: 1020 Surf Scoters, Long-tailed Ducks (heard but not seen), 80 Buffleheads, 5 Common Loons, 12 Horned Grebes, 18 Ruddy Ducks, and 20 Lesser Scaup, plus a pair of Red-breasted Mergansers in the cove.   
            HEADIN’ HOME:  11 Tundra Swans in a field NW of Cordova.  An imm. Bald Eagle perched in a tree east of the routes 481 X 309 pond, where there is a Wilson’s Snipe and no other birds.  Eight deer next to the pond just south and east of Hope.  Trip total of 125 Turkey Vultures.
            CORRECTION, TAYLOR’S ISLAND.  In the notes for March 8 I wrote about holly damage from the snows on Robinson Neck and Punch Island roads.  This should be Pine Top Road, not Punch Island Road.  There has also been a lot of holly damage in the Ferry Neck Road woodlands but not too much at Rigby’s Folly.            Best to all. – Harry Armistead, Philadelphia. 		 	   		  
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