HOLLAND ISLAND, July 18 & FERRY NECK, July 17-19, 2010.
July 18, Sunday:
David Curson, Carol McCollough & Sarah Warner ride down with me to the Crocheron launch site. Sarah hears some Chuck-will’s-widows on her way over from St. Michaels.
Blackwater N.W.R., Sewards causeway, 1 American White Pelican, 24 Double-crested Cormorants (all immatures)., 10 or so Forster’s Terns.
Crocheron: 1 immature Yellow-crowned Night Heron standing atop a decrepit shed on the shore, only the 2nd YCNH I’ve ever seen on mainland Dorchester County. Two Bald Eagles. 5 Royal Terns. 1 Clapper Rail. 2 unID’d peep flying off of Bishop’s Head Point.
Holland Island, c. 9 A.M. – 11:30 A.M. Due to their being just 2 boats participation is limited and 7 or so who signed up did not, unfortunately, get to go, on the basis of 5 or so criteria. Clear, west 15-7 m.p.h., temps in the 80s. Comfortable for birds and people. Low tide c. noon. This is the first banding trip to Holland Island this smmer.
460 pelican young are banded. More than expected. Obviously new nests developed after Jared Sparks and I counted 211 on May 29. One dead chick found, had been dead for a while. Thus far 2,487 pelican chicks have been banded in the central Chesapeake Bay in 2010, on track to be the 2nd highest total since the project began in 1987. Participants:
Dave Brinker (project director), John Weske (assistant project director), Steve Kendrot (boat captain), Steve Swartz (boat captain), Christina Bunch, Sara Schwarz, Laurel Brinker-Cole, Leland Baldwin, Sean Baldwin, Emil Peterson, Anthony Wentz, Tommy Diffendal, David Welsh, Carol McCollough, David Curson, Sara Warner and Melissa Applegate plus myself.
Pelican nests with eggs and/or very small young. This should be a nearly complete and exact tabulation except for c. 10-12 nests (not tabulated) with slightly larger young that are not banded because they are also too small. TOTAL 64 such nests (+ the 10-12 others): 1 egg 4 nests; 2 eggs 6 nests; 3 eggs 6 nests; 1 young 7 nests; 2 young 13 nests; 3 young 17 nests; 1 egg, 1 young 8 nests; 2 eggs, 1 young 3 nests; 2 young 1 egg 0 nests. Several of the eggs are pipping while we are there. Thus, a planned return visit in August might band an additional 140-175 pelican chicks.
My role is as a bird catcher. As a result my supple, thin trousers get torn in several places by the pelicans’ claws, have to be discarded.
Cormorant nests contents. I stopped tabulating these, probably only recorded one fourth of them, due to the press of work going on with the pelicans: 1 young 1 nest; 2 young 1 nest; 3 young 1 nest; 2 eggs 2 nests; 3 eggs 1 nest; 2 young 1 egg 1 nest; 1 young 1 egg 2 nest3. Many of the untabulated nests have eggs. John bands 24 cormorant chicks.
Only 1 Diamondback Terrapin seen. 6 American Oystercatchers, very vocal. 2 Yellow-crowned Night Herons. We’re busy with the pelican banding so I didn’t have much time to goof off and just birdwatch.
The fecundity of Holland Island’s birdlife is remarkable. It’s not a very big island yet hosts big numbers of breeding pelicans and cormorants as well as Herring and Great Black-backed gulls. In addition, for the past 10 years or so, all of Maryland’s herons, egrets, and ibis have nested here, hundreds of them in aggregate. In addition most years there’s a successful breeding pair of Bald Eagles plus Gadwalls, Clapper Rails, Seaside Sparrows, Willets, Ospreys, and American Oystercatchers. Each year the island diminishes in size. Its years are numbered.
Adam Island: 37 Mute Swans off the south end.
Beech Ground Road: 1 Sika Deer. Nearby: 3 Wild Turkeys.
Egypt Road: 2 Spicebush Swallowtails, 3 Horned Larks. A poor little baby skunk d.o.r. just s. of the Prothonotary Warbler place with a concerned adult a few feet away. 1 American Kestrel, probably a post-breeding wanderer from somewhere else, about the right time of year for that.
Rigby’s Folly, July 17-19. Good visitation with children Anne, Mary & George on hand plus Mike Solomonov, Laura Oppenheim, Derek Ayres, and, visiting from Kfar Sava, Israel, Eran Bick:
There’s been heavy rain since the last visit, most of it over the weekend of July 10-11 when I hear 6-7” fell in parts of the St. Michaels area, causing the closure of some roads then. We could still use some more. Our 3 small ponds finally have a reasonable amount of water in them again after one became bone dry. Fields still unplanted.
July 17, Saturday. While canoeing Laura and George see a Cooper’s Hawk. This is the 5th sighting of COHA here since May 8, leading me to suspect local breeding. 1 Snowy Egret. Temperature soars to 95.
July 18, Sunday. 79-96°F., fair, SW 5-10 m.p.h. HOT. 2 Snowy Egrets. Still 85°F. at 9:30 P.M.
July 19, Monday. 78-90, fair, SW 15, more bearable weather. Much lightning but no thunder at 1:30 A.M. Flush a Great Horned Owl from Woods 7. Five American Crows soon get on its case. I hope it gets revenge at night. At Lucy Point a rather shaggy adult Bald Eagle is perched in the big, old Black Cherry, gets divebombed by 2 Ospreys, then flies over to Holland Point and perches peacefully on a lower branch of the southernmost Black Locust there.
1 Least Tern. 1 Great Egret. 3 Blue Grosbeaks (almost every year they nest in small persimmons along the driveway on the south side of Field 2). 2 Downy Woodpeckers pecking on something on the flimsy outer branches of a Black Locust in the yard. 7 deer including 2 small fawns. 1 Gray Squirrel. Mary, Mike and Eran see a Five-lined Skink and a small Fowler’s Toad along the Olszewski Trails. Mary sees a Southern Leopard Frog.
In some of the raw areas where the shoreline erosion control work was done earlier this year by heavy equipment healing has begun and there are volunteer Black Locusts, Trumpet Creeper shoots, Black Cherries, and Persimmons beginning to grow. Good.
BUTTERFLIES: 1 Black, 1 Tiger, and 6 Spicebush swallowtails, 4 Red-spotted Purples, 1 Snout, 1 Orange Sulphur, 25 Cabbage Whites, 2 Silver-spotted Skippers, 1 Hackberry Emperor, 2 Pearlcrescents, 4 Common Wood Nymphs, 1 Zabulon Skipper, and 1 Red Admiral. A butterfly I found dead 2 weeks ago seems to be, on examining the books today, a Delaware Skipper, but … skippers perplex me.
Mike and Eran, both chefs, grill local venison that we devour for lunch.
Leave for Philadelphia at 3:30 P.M. From the Blue Route to home there are intermittent, strong thunderstorms and deluges. On the way I see double rainbows 5 times, the 3rd time each completing full 180° arcs.
Best to all. – Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.
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