FERRY NECK, TALBOT COUNTY, MARYLAND, NOVEMBER 4-8, 2010: a sunny, windy, rather cold time, except for the rain on Thursday.  Liz & Harry Armistead.
            NOVEMBER 4, Thursday.  Apparently it has rained all day.  Thus we detect only 7 Turkey Vultures on our way here.  Eight Wild Turkeys near routes 33 X 329 in their favorite field east of St. Michaels.  14 deer at Rigby’s Folly, 1 in Woods 2, 13 in Field 4.  Arrive at 5 P.M.  Rain, overcast, NE winds 10 m.p.h., 52°F.    
            NOVEMBER 5, Friday.  Bob & Betsy Lukens arrive and are our guests for the next several days.  Finally, some Buffleheads: 19.  Many sightings of Bald Eagles that total at least 9, evidently tying the 2nd highest previous tally here, 9 seen September 26, 1999.   Bob and I see 2 tangling for several minutes way out over the Choptank.  One drops a small fish and the other catches it in midair.  Other raptors: 1 ad. Red-shouldered, 2 Red-tailed & 2 Sharp-shinned hawks, 5 Black & 18 Turkey vultures, and 1 Northern Harrier.  
            Also: 25 goldfinches, 4 Forster’s Terns, a Red-breasted Nuthatch, an Eastern Phoebe, 4 Common Loons, and 1 Great Blue Heron.  2 Gray Squirrels.    Two leopard frogs at The Pond.  Surprisingly, 100s of small, blackish tadpoles wriggle all through the rainwater pond on the NE side of Field 4.  We all watch the sunset from Lucy Point.  
            BUTTERFLIES: mostly found today on the south facing edges of hedgerows where there is sun, clusters of asters, and some protection from the winds - 27 Buckeyes, 6 Cabbage Whites, 1 Pearlcrescent, and 4 Orange Sulphurs.  Overcast becoming partly sunny then fair, NW 15-5, 48-59.  
             NOVEMBER 6, Saturday.  A leisurely day with walks and a visit to a neighbor’s house that is for sale (where a dozen or more of the plantings seem to be Deodar Cedars with their attractive, aromatic, fused cones).  Clear becoming fair, 46-55, NW15+, VERY low tide.  Am so disappointed not to have launched the boat and gone rockfishing but the forecast is for a combo of high winds and low water in the cove and puts the kibosh on this.  
            Four Bald Eagles, 1 Red-shouldered Hawk, 35 Buffleheads, a flyover flock of 11 immature Double-crested Cormorants, 1 Rusty Blackbird (a yard year bird), 325 American Robins early in the day (not a lot really for this time of year), 80 Cedar Waxwings, 1 Cooper’s Hawk, 1 Cackling Goose, 6 Chipping Sparrows, 1 Sharp-shinned & 4 Red-tailed hawks, 1 Eastern Meadowlark, and 35 Buffleheads.  A single Buckeye the only butterfly.
            NOVEMBER 7, Sunday.  Clear becoming fair, 42-52, NW20+, a good day for a sail, which we do aboard the skipjack ‘Rebecca T. Ruark’ with the inimitable Capt. Wade Murphy, whose charm, stories, knowledge, and friendliness anyone who says they really care about Chesapeake Bay should be lucky enough and duty bound to experience.  He lets one take the helm, help raise the mainsail, reef the mainsail, etc.  I took the helm for over half an hour and my temperament ranged from feeling on top of the world to being petrified.  
            A brief scraping session brings in enough Oysters for all of us to have one, mine leaving a delicious salty residue for a good hour afterwards.  The dredger also brings up a beautiful, rather large Blue Crab.  Not many birds in Harris Creek during the sail (1 Bufflehead but no scoters, Long-tailed Ducks, or loons) but there are 60+ Great Black-backed Gulls and a distant feeding frenzy of (Laughing?) gulls off of Nelson Point, I’d guess over Menhaden.
            At Rigby’s Folly: 2 Bald Eagles, 70 Cedar Waxwings, 65 American Robins, and 1 Red-tailed Hawk.  We’re away 10 A.M. until almost 3:30, sail from 11-1:30.  1 Gray Squirrel.  Tide very low.  A Red Fox on the driveway at the edge of Field 4.  Eight Wild Turkeys are in one of John Swaine’s fields.  
            At 6:30 P.M. the firmament is brilliant; it’s easy to see the Milky Way.  But standard time brings in a sort of gloom right after sunset: “When it comes the landscape listens./Shadows hold their breath./When it goes ‘tis like the distance/On the look of death.” – Emily Dickinson, from ‘There’s a certain slant of light on winter afternoons.’   
            NOVEMBER 8, Monday.  Clear, NW20+, 43°F.  Return home but not before Liz spots an adult Bald Eagle and 2 Forster’s Terns in the cove.  A Red Fox on the driveway out in front of the house.  At the base of the yard Willow Oak are 3 Gray Squirrels at the corn, a FURitable triumFURate.  A Bald Eagle and a Sharp-shinned Hawk near Cordova.  An ad. Bald Eagle at routes 301 X 481.  108 Turkey Vultures on the trip to PA; would have been more but Liz knits much of the time.  
            With all this cold weather accompanied by NW winds I am surprised and disappointed to see no Tundra Swans and to not have bigger influxes of geese, loons, robins, sparrows, waxwings, and other late migrants.
            PLANT NOTES, AND A RANT.  The Marsh Hibiscus discovered on the edge of the yard’s boat launching ramp has 15 stems, the most ever seen there.  Here’s hoping it spreads in 2011.  The big oak that recently died, a Cherrybark Oak, has one horizontal branch that extends out 60 feet from the trunk to the south, reminding me of some of the classic Live Oaks one sees on southern plantations.  Lots of asters, some Goldenrod, and one Tickseed Sunflower are still in bloom as are a few Dandelions.  The fluffy white seeds of the Baccharis halimifolia are mostly over, having blown away.    
            THE RANT: Today contractors, 3 men, plant 147 Spartina alterniflora sprigs along a section of the cove bank designated by the permitting agency, in their near infinite wisdom, to become “living shoreline.”  
            As a boy, in the 1940s-early 1960s, I well remember that our entire shoreline was living and had a fringe of Spartina alterniflora 20-40 feet wide.  This has, most lamentably, almost entirely eroded away.  
            I don’t know why the current living shoreline addition, which is a puny 6 or 7 feet X 35 feet, will survive any better.  It is “protected” by a low veneer of rip rap that is submerged by any higher-than-normal tide.  Indeed today, when the high tide is very high, the rocks and newly planted marsh grass become completely submerged while the bank actively erodes behind them, clouding the water so that neither the grasses nor the rocks are visible.  
            But one is beholden to the permitting agency, even if its prime permitter is little more than one third my age with a college degree in this sort of thing from an institution in Idaho.  I am sure it will look good in their annual report that so many living shorelines were mandated, but I am betting that the affected area will have to be shored up in some other way very soon, at our extra expense.  I hope I’m wrong.  Thanks for listening.                  
            EXCELLENT NEW BOOK.  Nightjars, potoos, frogmouths, Oilbird and owlet-nightjars of the world by Nigel Moore (Princeton U. Pr., 2010, 464 pages).  Deals with all 135 species, some known only from a single specimen, with 580 superb color photographs.  The words “weird” and “bizarre” apply to these mysterious night birds with their marvelously-patterned plumages and unearthly vocalizations. With several species the males have extravagant tail or wing feathers twice as long as their bodies.  
            One glitch involves our Chuck-will’s-widow, common on much of the Delmarva Peninsula, but the range map (p. 126) does not show it occurring here.  Also, instead of the lengthy section of Photographic Credits (pages 425-441) it would have been nice (and I assume quite feasible) to simply have this information right next to the photographs, especially since it includes locations and dates in addition to the photographers’ names.  All too often in otherwise fine books artists and photographers get short shrift and are relegated to obscure acknowledgement in an inconvenient section of the book.  However, this book is one to treasure.   
            ‘til next time.  Best to all. – Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.