FERRY NECK & BLACKWATER N.W.R., DECEMBER 4-7, 2010.  Not much fun, really.  Cold and very windy, barely getting out of the 30s but at least clear or fair.  The Choptank River mouth is a seething mass of whitecaps almost the entire visit.
            SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4.  52 Turkey Vultures on the way down plus an imm. Bald Eagle at mile 107 on Route 301.  3:30 until dark only.  9 Tundra Swans arriving from the N, 16 Surf Scoters, 11 Buffleheads, 12 Canvasbacks (flying up the Choptank River).  Liz spots a 20” young Black Rat Snake right next to the front porch.  Its eyes are so clear and it is limp.  I think it is torpid and place it under a pile of leaves on the S side of the house.  Out on Holland Point are 5 deer (does).  John Swaine has harvested the soy beans in Fields 4-7.  I enjoy watching the sunset out at Lucy Point.  Back in November I counted 31 jet contrails in sight simultaneously from here during one sunset.  Gotta count somethin’.  
            Fair, 42-39, NW10.      
            SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5.  
            In Cambridge House Sparrows and a starling are already active at the Wawa before first light and there’s an Eastern Cottontailed Bunny Wabbit at E. Appleby and Goodwill avenues.
            Blackwater N.W.R., the last birdwalk of the year, with Levin Willey, Julia & Michael Redmond, and Bill Stein.  7 A.M. – 12:15 (birdwalk from 8-noon).  The white pelican that has been almost as much of a refuge fixture as the Contact Station is missed once again.  Just 43 species.  
            Some of the few highlights: all of 3 ad. Snow Geese, 26 Tundra Swans, 2 American Wigeon, 20 shovelers, 100 pintails, 8 Green-winged Teal, 5 Hooded Mergansers, 3 Ruddy Ducks, 1 distant flyover Common Loon, 45 Bald Eagles (continuous presence, turned on by the high winds), 1 Cooper’s & 1 Sharp-shinned hawk, 5 coots, 7 Killdeer, 30 Mourning Doves, 5 Downy Woodpeckers, 14 Tree Swallows, 30 bluebirds, 5 waxwings, 11 juncos, and 9 goldfinches.
            Julia spots a Fox Squirrel.  Some of the Queen Anne’s Lace is still in flower.  Water in the impoundments remains high, tidal waters low.  Mostly cloudy, 39°F., WNW25-30.    
            1:30 P.M. until dark only at Rigby’s Folly.  45 Cedar Waxwings.  2 deer.  600 Canada Geese.  A Brown Creeper foraging in a Hawthorn along the driveway in front of the house.  An imm. Bald Eagle.  
            John Swaine, recognizing the little boy that lurks in all of us, offers me a ride in his massive combine as he harvests Field 2.  Its front tires are 48” wide, the rear tires are 26”, and the entire mechanism is 35’ wide.  Monstrous.  The beans are sparse enough this season to have admitted much sunlight and the harvested fields, while not quite as verdant as a golf green or lawn, are green enough so I’d think they’d attract geese and other field birds.  John is on the cusp of harvesting Field 1 (the Big Field).
            This week’s storm, with tremendous winds and high water, Tuesday-Thursday, has done some damage locally, but our shoreline – the part that extends from Lucy Point to our southern boundary at Tranquility - sustains little damage, to my immense relief, especially considering that this shoreline segment faces south, and some of the highest water was when winds came out of the SW. 
            Today Greg Inskip of Wilmington, continuing his intensive field work in Dorchester County, spots FIVE DIFFERENT GOLDEN EAGLES, all of them off-refuge at places such as Buttons Neck and Decoursey Bridge roads as well as Bestpitch!  From his message to me, with his permission:
            “Two adults from Buttons Neck Road near Route 16 between 8 and 9 am  (I did not see these birds together and would have counted the sightings as one except that one bird has a primary feather missing from the left wing);  A hatch year immature south of Decoursey Bridge Road around 10:30 am and again at 1:45 pm (lots of white in the tail and below the wings; white spots visible on the upper wing surface);  Another hatch year immature (without visible white on the upper wing surface) off of Bestpitch Ferry Road at 11:45 am, playing high in the air with a larger bird (female?) that has white in wings and tail like hatch year birds but distinct pale (tawny) bars on upperwing coverts, so a one and a half year old subadult.  The two adults, the Decoursey immature and the Bestpitch Ferry immature before his girl friend arrived looked like they were hunting squirrels – kiting in wind deflected from the edge of a woods, gliding slowly across corn stubble, wheat or switchgrass etc., then moving along the edges of woods and fields again.”
            MONDAY, DECEMBER 6.  Take ‘the Mudhen’ in to winter storage at Gootee’s after yet another season of minimal use.  Buy new hip waders at The Shore Sportsman.  A brief drive through Blackwater in the mid-afternoon nets Liz and me 10 American Coots (Pool 5), 1 Pied-billed Grebe (Pool 5), 4 Northern Harriers, 2 Red-tailed Hawks, 55 Northern Shovelers, 3 Greater Yellowlegs, and 4 American Black Ducks, all of these, except the redtails, exceeding yesterday’s modest totals.  Back at Rigby’s Folly 125 European Starlings in the mostly dead maple by the garage and 3 deer elsewhere.  Fair, 34-39, WNW 25-30, cold.    
            TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7.  Check one spot on the shoreline recently bulked up next to the N end of Woods 8.  Tyler Construction Company did a good job there.  29°F., clear, WNW 25+.  At the deer corn, mostly at the base of the big, yard Willow Oak, are 2 Gray Squirrels, an American Crow, cardinals, juncos, whitethroats, and several Blue Jays.  We load up and head back to Pennsylvania.  Ten Tundra Swans in a field N of Cordova preceded by an ad. Bald Eagle over Rt. 309.  Two Tundra Swans on a farm pond W of routes 309 X 481.  A Barred Owl roadkill at mile 103.5 Route 301.  It seems to me that, even though they’re fewer of them, Barreds get hit more than Great Horneds do.  64 Turkey Vultures on the way home. 
            Out the driveway near the gateposts we’ve found a nice shrub on both sides in Woods 2 and 5 that apparently is Eastern Wahoo.  The old Golden Press tree guide (Trees of North America, 1968, C. Frank Brockman, pp. 208-209) indicates its range does not reach the Delmarva Peninsula but the “deeply-lobed purplish-red capsules with red seeds” is a pretty good description of what we’re seeing.  A bittersweet, Euonymus atropurpureus.  Not in the Sibley guide.  Anyone have any ideas on this?   
            “We are ill-equipped by instinct to control ourselves.  Even with our tremendous intellect, we have a deep propensity for group conflict.  Look at our defense expenditures, the way we glorify the constant expansion of human settlement and human growth, our archaic religions, [all of] which give us nothing but grief because they are essentially tribal.  Our religions are ill-equipped to handle our present problems, especially when they start trying to discredit what we find out and prove with science.”  E. O. Wilson, Onearth, Winter 2011, p. 47.
            On that cheery note … my best wishes.  Happy holidays … anyway.  – Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.