FERRY NECK, May 20-31, 2010. Reports are from our place, Rigby’s Folly, unless indicated otherwise.
ABBREVIATIONS: DCCO, Double-crested Cormorant. ISS, in sight simultaneously. Ø, used to indicate a bird that is not an adult male.
May 20, Thursday. We click 116 Turkey Vultures on the way down from Philadelphia. Carolina Wrens: not content with a former nest with 4 eggs in the back of my boat that was removed into a nice planter hung a few feet from the nest on a car port post, their new nest is now over the front doorsill, but with no eggs. I check the old nest on May 30: no birds, 4 eggs still there = nest abandoned, the usual situation when a nest gets relocated.
2 Red Admirals. 4 deer. 18 Diamondback Terrapin. Green Tree Frogs calling, as they will most evenings during this entire stay. They’ve only been present here for the last 10 years or less. WE are present from 3:45 P.M. only. Fair, 80, SW5.
May 21, Friday. Initial boat trip with the new 4-stroke Yamaha 60 H.P. Starts so easy, quiet at low speeds, no messing with a prime bulb or choke. Go from 11 until noon, 4 miles, 1 hour, 5 minutes, out c. 1.5 miles in the Choptank River mouth, clear, 75 degrees F., dead calm, real nice. Good bird results, too: 25 Surf Scoters, 2 Common Loons, a Ø Red-breasted Merganser, a Spotted Sandpiper, 2 Laughing Gulls, 1 adult Tundra Swan (not seen subsequently), 4 DCCOs, 2 Common Terns, and in imm.Bald Eagle.
A singing Brown Thrasher. A Red Fox. 2 Cow-nosed Rays, the first-of-the-year. A Yellow-billed Cuckoo, scarce the past 2 years. Clear 4 trees downed by the storm of May 14, at Lucy Point (3 Black Locusts and a Honey Locust). BUTTERFLIES: a Black Swallowtail (seldom seen here), American Ladies, Orange Sulphurs, Cabbage Whites, Read Admirals, Spring Azures, Red-spotted Purples. A Great Horned Owl calls at 8:30 P.M.
A RECORD COUNT for here: 202 Diamondback Terrapin seen from Lucy Point plus 40 more in the cove = 242. Big 10-wheel trucks deliver 4 loads of large riprap stone. Thus loaded, each truck weighs c. 65,000 lbs. Fair, SW5-calm, 65-85.
May 22, Saturday. A migrant ♀ American Redstart. 24 Turkey Vultures ISS, a lot for the middle of the breeding season. 2 Cedar Waxwings. Unusual, seeing 5 Great Blue Herons in a group headed towards, presumably, Coaches Island. A 2nd shakedown cruise in ‘the Mudhen’, up Irish Creek - 5.1 miles, 1 hour, 25 minutes - where Liz and I find 11 Osprey nests. Crank in 2 in our cove and 3 out from Tranquility and that makes 16 in the general area, all on pilings or poles.
6 Least Terns. 3 Chimney Swifts. On the front porch: 2 sizeable Broadhead Skinks, a.k.a. “red-headed scorpion.” “Big, olive-brown males, with their widely swollen jowls and orange-red heads, are impressive reptiles” (p. 130, Peterson reptiles and amphibians guide, 3rd ed., 1991). I’d have to agree. They’ve only been seen here twice previously. Partly sunny, E-SE 5-10, 70s. Clipped overhanging vegetation along drive in front of house plus on the Lucy Point and Irish Creek trails, a big circlular route.
The first blossoms emerge on our Magnolia grandiflora, later than on neighboring trees. Too bad this tree is not a natural part of our forests here. Even in Great Dismal Swamp such an authority as M. Brooke Meanley only encountered them once, along North Jericho Ditch, as detailed in Notes on Dismal Swamp plants (Brooke Meanley, Louise Brooke & Shanta Brooke Keller, 2001, privately published). Brooke’s splendid, artful photographs grace this book: of plant specimens and plants in situ as well as inspiring scenic shots.
OSPREY PROBLEM. 1st nest is on a neighbor’s boat. That is removed. 2nd nest is on the same neighbor’s chimney. THAT is removed. Their 3rd nest is on another neighbor’s boat, and is huge. A pole with platform is then erected nearby and the boat nest moved to it, but this 4th location is not adopted by this pair. A revolving hose sprinkler is installed on the boat that hosted the 3rd nest to discourage their return. But when it’s off they DO return. It’s late in the season and I think this pair will not nest successfully in 2010.
May 23, Sunday. A Virginia Opossum, Red Fox, Indigo Bunting, Bald Eagle, and a calling Chuck-will’s-widow along the driveway, 5:30-5:38 A.M. In the pre-dawn near darkness it’s common to pick up a male Indigo Bunting in the car headlights. Under such conditions the little bird almost glows, seems nearly incandescent. Most of today is spent on a Blackwater refuge birdwalk.
DRAMA AT A NEIGHBOR’S DOCK. A Fish Crow pursued by 3 Barn Swallows, a mockingbird, and a kingbird, nevertheless disappears under Michael Davidson’s dock several times, no doubt in search of Barn Swallow eggs (or young). I saw this happen once before under the bridge at Church Creek (the creek, not the town of that name), Hooper’s Island, and wrote a note on it (“Caspian Tern, Fish Crow, and Northern Mockingbird behavior,” Maryland birdlife, 53:4, 1997, pp. 105-107). Perhaps it happens more frequently than we suspect.
While the Fish Crow’s depredations are transpiring, a Great Blue Heron is standing there RIGHT UNDER the dock, hunting fishes. Just about then a Snowy Egret approaches the dock, walks under it, and emerges on the other side. Next a Herring Gull flies in with a crab, lands on the dock, and shares it (how unlikely) with another HEGU. A few feet away an Osprey incubates on its piling nest. All of this within a few minutes of 6 P.M.
May 24, Monday. The 25 Surf Scoters are visible from our shoreline. Partly sunny becoming overcast, E-NNE 10, 70s. Liz sees a Cooper’s Hawk, perhaps the same one she saw on May 8 and we both saw on May 9. Make a 3rd boat trip up Broad Creek, 8.3 miles, 1 hour & 35 minutes, get the boat up to plane for the 1st time with the new engine. Find 8 Osprey nests, 6 Diamondback Terrapin, a Cow-nosed Ray, 6 DCCOs, 4 Least Terns, and 5 Herring Gulls – out here at the Choptank River mouth it’s still pretty barren. A Red Fox kit. 2 Gray Squirrels, one of them giving me “what for” as I trespass in its domain, the Olszewski Trails. 7 deer. From our bed we hear Fowler’s Toads, Green Tree Frogs, and a Great Horned Owl c. 10 P.M.
May 25, Tuesday. We see an adult Red Fox standing next to what’s left of a Wild Turkey: 2 wings attached to the rib cage. Two Broadhead Skinks are fighting on the wood chip pile where a dead Yellow Poplar was removed last year. Their combat is impressive and it continues even as I sprinkle them with the hose, raging hormones of some kind. Except for the small matter of scale, they look to be right out of one of Charles R. Knight’s classic paleontological paintings of a Triassic scene. Nearby I catch a 7” Five-lined Skink on the back porch and the little sucker bites me. A smaller 5LSK is on the front porch. This month provides the best lizard show we’ve ever had here. In Field 1 I count 149 Cabbage Whites but in adjacent Field 2, with nearly identical vegetation (but somewhat less sun), I only see 2. Overcast becoming fair, NNE5 – NW10+, 67-80. Better fair than unfair.
A 4th boat trip around Benoni Point and all the way up shallow Fox Hole Creek, 8.4 miles, 1 hour, 48 minutes. See some Wild Turkeys on the Irish Creek Trail from the boat. 18 Diamondback Terrapin, most of them hauled out, are on the sod bank of what is left of the saltmarsh near the Saffs’ place, where Clapper Rails once nested in the 1950s, when the Campers lived there, as related to me then by Minnie Camper.
May 26, Wednesday. Do 2 hours of brush work on the Olszewski Trails, where a Pileated Woodpecker drums and calls. A lone Mute Swan flyover, in search of others of its kind, most of them exterminated by now. A 5th boat trip, 7.4 miles, 1 hour, 5 minutes, 3-4:15 P.M., out into the Choptank River mouth to red buoy 12A: highlight consists of a surprising flock of 11 Black Scoters (incl. 2 ♂; ties the high for here; one of the few spring records), 1 Laughing Gull, 1 Cow-nosed Ray, 1 ad. Bald Eagle, and 8 deer seen from the boat. A Broadhead Skink atop, and then within, the firewood on the front porch picnic table. Fair, 68 – unrecorded, NW5-SW5.
Several Purple Grackles chase a Five-lined Skink on a Black Locust stump. I clap. They fly off. Then 4 Blue Jays alight where the 2 Broadhead Skinks had been fighting yesterday, and I scare them off. Leave those lizards alone! I am beginning to share Alexander Skutch’s dislike (which I have always felt to be irrational, especially from such a respected naturalist) of predation. Skutch, originally from Baltimore, spent most of his life on his beloved Costa Rica property, where he lived to within a few weeks of becoming 100 years of age. About as venerable, and well-published, as any naturalist of our times, but he hated snakes.
May 27, known in most circles as, simply, Thursday, or, in this case, Day of the Living Black Rat Snakes. A 3-foot BLRS hunting in the area where the skink fight was. Liz sees 2 other BLRSs swimming across the cove. Liz and I cut most of the huge Loblolly Pine section that was blocking the Warbler Trail. Phew! I dislike chainsaws. There’s a 4-foot BLRS on the brick path between the Boxwoods. 5 Wild Turkeys in Field 4, where we also see 2 does and an adorable, small fawn that gambols after its mother. 1 Snowy Egret. Clear, NE5, 68-90.
May 28, Friday. Some rain and wind last night = the huge dead American Elm falls right across the driveway on the south side of Field 2. John Swaine comes with an impressive tractor equipped with a frontend loader, shoves it off to the side. Liz sees the Cooper’s Hawk yet again. 9 Wild Turkeys in Field 4. 1 Northern Watersnake. A male Ruby-throated Hummingbird investigates Liz’s plantings just a few feet away from us. See the small fawn again. Fair becoming overcast, NE5-SE10+, 62-74. Jared Sparks arrives.
May 29, Saturday. Liz sees a flotilla of Canada Geese in the cove: 11 adults, 9 large young, 1 small downy. Jared Sparks & I are boating in Dorchester County all day. Daughter, Mary, and S-I-L Mike Solomonov arrive.
May 30, Sunday. A Talbot Bird Club field trip to Ferry Neck led by Les Coble with most of the time spent at Bellevue and, especially, the beautiful woodlands and grassy field areas of Bob Scrimgeour’s farm, but ending up at Rigby’ Folly. 56 species and 20 participants, incl. Jan Reese, Margie Steffens, Cathy Cooper, Les Roslund, and Danny Poet.
Numbers and species that follow are mine and not the official totals, which may, however, often be the same: 5 flickers, a Brown-headed Nuthatch (at Bellevue X Ferry Neck roads intersection), 2 Grasshopper Sparrows (close range, great views), 1 quail, 9 Wild Turkeys (Field 4), Red-tailed Hawk, Killdeer, bluebirds, the 3 mimic thrushes, 4 yellowthroats, a Song Sparrow, a hummingbird, 6 Indigo Buntings, a Least Tern, a baby Gray Squirrel (scampering on Heron Point Rd.), some deer, and a Red-eyed Vireo. Jan points out 4-5 Little Wood Satyrs along the Scrimgeour driveway, where there is a Green and a Great Blue heron in the wooded swamp area with a luxuriant growth of Mud Plantain.
Later in the day Mary and Mike see a Snapping Turtle while jogging. Mary gathers mulberries with which Mike will make delicious rugalech, after adding cointreau and some sugar. I find 12 Little Wood Satyrs at Rigby’s Folly. Mary, Mike and I take my 6th boat trip (88 degrees F., calm, fair), up Irish Creek and out into the Choptank, 6.6 miles, 1 hour 20 minutes: 1 Cow-nosed Ray, 1 Surf Scoter & 2 Common Loons. Earlier in the day the 11 Black Scoters are visible from our shoreline.
The Barn Swallow nest under the dock catwalk now has 4 eggs. Jared leaves. Liz spots an 8” Five-lined Skink at Lucy Point - unusual to spot one away from the house because they’re so inconspicuous. 1 ad. Bald Eagle. 91 degrees F. at 3:44 P.M. Blue Jays, nesting in our yard somewhere, chase a Gray Squirrel through the big Willow Oak. 1 Muskrat. Trumpet Creeper has started to bloom.
May 31, Monday. The lonely Mute Swan, flying over again in its quest to hook up with others of its kind. 1 Gray Squirrel. We leave for Philadelphia c. 2 P.M., caravan with Mike and Mary up to Middletown. 57 Turkey Vultures tallied on the way to PA.
LEAST TERNS: Jared Sparks estimated at least 200 adult Least Terns nesting on the roofs of various buildings in Easton and Cambridge on May 23.
THE LESS I ITCH THE MORE I SCRATCH: old Harry Belafonte song. Most of the family has found that Benadryl gel works better than the spray for alleviating the itching from tick and other bites.
IT’S GOOD TO BE DA KING. Tsarevich Nicholas [Nicholas II] “having spent five or six hours a day shooting, recorded 667 dead creatures for 1,596 shots fired one day in mid-winter 1893. Wilhelm [Kaiser Wilhelm II] … kept a list of everything he’d ever killed: by 1897 it totaled 33,967 animals … George [King George V] could bring down 1,000 pheasants in one day.” Quoted from The three emperors: three cousins, three empires, and the road to World War I by Miranda Carter (Fig Tree, 2009, 584 pages) as reviewed in the Oct. 30, 2009, Times Literary Supplement, p. 9. Thanks to Ben Weems for loaning us a pile of issues of the TLS.
Best to all. – Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.
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