FERRY NECK, FORT SMALLWOOD PARK, BLACKWATER N.W.R. & BRIGANTINE (Forsythe) N.W.R., APRIL 20-26, 2011.  Variable weather.  Unless specified otherwise all observations are at the Armistead property, Rigby’s Folly, on Ferry Neck, in Talbot County, Maryland.  
            APRIL 20, WEDNESDAY.  On the way down a Wild Turkey flies over the car on I-95 at mile 77.5 near Bel Air.
            Fort Smallwood Park, Anne Arundel County, MD.  Liz and I visit from noon until 4 P.M. and luck out with one of the best raptor flights of the year.  We see many of the 776 seen today including one hour with 102 Sharp-shinned Hawks.  Also: 2 Blue-winged Teal, 8 Gadwalls, 5 swallow species, 2 gnatcatchers, a Snowy Egret, flights of Blue Jays, singing Eastern Bluebirds, a Tiger Swallowtail, dragonflies, several Merlins, 2 Royal (not reported by Hal & Sue, but … I am certain) and 4 Caspian terns, a kingbird, Chimney Swifts, 2 Gray Squirrels, harriers, Bald Eagles, 12 raptor species altogether, and of course we miss hundreds of raptors and other birds seen by official counters Sue Ricciardi and Hal Wierenga in the morning.  55-82°F., SW 5-15 (gusting to 30), fair, a beautiful, warm, almost hot, spring day.
            After the hawk count Liz and I visit Lynn Davidson and Hal Wierenga at their charming home in Arnold, then go for a good meal of Mexican food nearby.  They have a beautiful Don Eckleberry portrait of three Northern Pintails and lots of interesting photographs, books, and other publications.  A red phase Eastern Screech Owl peers out at us from its nesting box in their yard.  
            Present at Rigby’s Folly only from 9:05 P.M. on.  Nice choruses of Fowler’s Toads and Spring Peepers.  The big piles of manure in the fields have been spread.  If anything the bouquet is even stronger now.  Grass was cut last week for the first time but has already grown so high you wouldn’t know it.  Perhaps it was the Modelo Negra at Hal & Lynn’s combined with 2 Margaritas at dinner plus a sinus pill but I slept straight through, which hardly ever happens, until after 9 A.M. Thursday.
            Son, George, and Laura Oppenheim are honeymooning in Nantucket and see a couple of early species there: a Red-eyed Vireo and an Orchard Oriole, on Tuesday, I think.
            APRIL 21, THURSDAY.  9 active Osprey nests are within sight of our shoreline, I think a record number.  From Lucy Point: 11 Northern Gannets, 1 Lesser Scaup, 13 Buffleheads, 4 Common Loons, 8 Ospreys well offshore, 1 Bald Eagle, and 65 Surf Scoters.  
            Liz sees a Ruby-crowned Kinglet in the yard and 2 Five-lined Skinks around the front porch, the latter early in the year.  3 Painted Turtles basking on their favorite log in the Woods 4 vernal pool.  1 Brown Thrasher.  A Wild Turkey in Field 4.  5 deer.  Insects: 18 unID’d sulphurs, 5 Cabbage Whites, 1 unID’d damsel fly, and 2 unID’d dragonflies.
            Fair becoming clear, NW 20-15, 57-64°F.  I find a fat Fowler’s Toad in the grassy mowed area at Lucy Point.  The 9 mitigation oaks planted last fall, all 8-10’, are all, gratifyingly, still alive.  
            A small brick fragment from the west chimney has been on the front porch roof for years in spite of great snows, gale force winds, and rain deluges.  It has finally been washed off of the roof onto the ground below.  Little things such as this sometimes pique one’s curiosity, seem to defy the law of physics, or are otherwise unaccountable.
            APRIL 22, GOOD FRIDAY.  From Lucy Point: 105 Surf Scoters, 3 Herring Gulls, 13 Lesser Scaup, 3 Great Blue Herons, 3 Ospreys, 15 Buffleheads, 3 Common Loons and that’s all (no gannets).  In spite of its being cold and overcast there’s bad shimmer, limiting visibility to a mile.  5 Gray Squirrels including a small yearling.  
            In the Frog Hollow Bald Eagle nest are two very dark and strapping eaglets.  Their parents have had to endure snow, gale force winds, and heavy rains.  The nest is only c. 100’ feet from: the main road, a driveway, and a house and is also right on the edge of an area that is regularly mowed.  In spite of all this the birds seem to be thriving.  Mitchell Byrd, Virginia’s leading Bald Eagle authority, told me last fall that since the nadir of their population decline in the 1960s and 1970s eagles have become much more tolerant of human disturbance.  
            Nancy Moran, from Vermont, a good friend of my high school classmate Gordon Chaplin, drops in and we have a good time getting to know each other a little, talking about mutual acquaintances, then take the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry to Oxford, where Liz and I look over the books in Mystery Loves Company bookstore on Morris Street.  Off of The Strand are 3 Common Loons (1 with a captured Hogchoker) and 9 Buffleheads … and that’s all.  On Morris Street we see 2 Chimney Swifts drop into an old-style chimney.  
            Overcast, raw, cold, penetrating, light rain in the afternoon, E 5-10, temperature swings only 2°F. all day, varying from 47-45°F.  A good day to read and listen to music.  A huge immature Bald Eagle flushes from the hedgerow on the S side of Field 1.                
            APRIL 23, SATURDAY.  A Greater Yellowlegs in Field 4, where there is a nice, extensive wet area that also attracts Mallards sometimes.  2 Painted Turtles in Woods 4.  At the Frog Hollow Bald Eagle nest we see an adult feeding one of the eaglets, the other adult landing nearby, apparently waiting for us to leave.  The year’s first Diamondback Terrapin: 16 at the mouth of the cove, basking on the surface in the rather sudden warmth.  A Muskrat.  The year’s first cookout during which I see 9 Surf Scoters in the Choptank River mouth all the way from across Field 1, a distance of 0.2 of a mile.  Nice Spring Peeper chorus at The Pond at dusk.  5 Gray Squirrels.  See an American Lady.  1 ♂ Purple Martin.  13 Fish Crows.
            Liz and I shop in Easton.  On the way in she sees a Green Heron at the little pond near Carroll’s Market, where there are 6 Painted Turtles.  I purchase 14 reflectors to replace the hideous orange road cones that marked pulloffs and other features along the driveway.  No visit to Lucy Point today.  
            Overcast with light rain, 57-71°F., SW 15-5, becoming fair in the afternoon.  It is still 67°F. at 9 P.M. and 10:15 P.M.  
            During the gloomier weather I read and listen to music.  In the course of the day play the 3rd movement of Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony 4 times.  It is beautifully melancholy, full of pathos, and the great drum beats towards the end might even be described at sepulchral.  But this is resolved by the triumphant last movement, whose motif is the melody from ‘A might fortress is Our God.’  As with Eugene Ormandy, Mendelssohn was an apostate, but converting to Lutheranism was one heck of a switch.  Ormandy became Episcopalian.   
            APRIL 24, EASTER SUNDAY. 
            BLACKWATER N.W.R., 7:15 a.m. – 1:15 p.m., BIRDWALK FROM 8 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.  Some of the birds mentioned below are seen before or after the official birdwalk.  Birdwalk participants, 12, including Levin Willey, Jane Pilliod, A. J. O’Brien, Deatra & James Imler, Liz & Harry Armistead, and, originally from Ghana and scheduled to return there this summer: K. Baidoo, T. Asare, Kojo Baidoo, Fiifi Baidoo, and Adjoa Baidoo.
            Clear, 73-78°F., calm or SW 5-10, all water levels high.  68 species.  A gem of a spring day.
            Canada Goose 0 (!!).  Wood Duck 2.  Green-winged Teal 45.  Northern Pintail 2.  Blue-winged Teal 2.  Pied-billed Grebe 2 (Pool 1; some vocalizing).  American White Pelican 1 (old faithful, in the Little Blackwater River).  Great 8 & Snowy 1 egrets.  Osprey 18.  Bald Eagle 18.  Virginia Rail 2.  American Coot 8.  Greater 18 & Lesser 12 yellowlegs.  Pectoral Sandpiper 4.  Dunlin 165.  Wilson’s Snipe 4 (in low areas around the maintenance buildings).  
            Forster’s 9 & Least 10 terns.  Red-headed Woodpecker 1 ad.  Great Crested Flycatcher 3.  Eastern Kingbird 4.  Horned Lark 3 (Egypt Road).  Purple Martin 20 (well-patronized nest boxes adjacent to the temporary visitor center).  Brown-headed Nuthatch 3.  Eastern Bluebird 6.  Yellow Warbler 1 (at Sewards by Levin Willey).  Ovenbird 2.  Common Yellowthroat 10.  Savannah Sparrow 3 (Egypt Road).  Eastern Meadowlark 3.  Orchard Oriole 4.   
            NON-AVIAN TAXA:  2 Fox Squirrels (close, leisurely views near the Wildlife Drive blind), 1 Eastern Cottontail (a.k.a. the Easter Bunny; forsooth).  15 Redbelly Cooters, 4 Painted Turtles.  3 Black Swallowtails, 6 Cabbage Whites, 10 Orange Sulphurs, 1 Tiger Swallowtail, and various unID’d butterflies.         
            Two adult Bald Eagles over the head of the cove engage in a chase, one of them missing an inner right primary feather.  2 Eastern Kingbirds, 3 Gray Squirrels, 36 Diamondback Terrapin in the cove, 1 Snowy Egret, the kingbird and egret year birds for here.  1 ♂ Purple Martin.  Picking up a plastic chair we keep out on the dock I’m startled when a 2.5’ Northern Watersnake slithers out from underneath and plunges into the cove waters.  4 Forster’s Terns plunge-diving in said cove, with some success.  
            Clear becoming fair, SW 10-5, 81-83°F., falling to 79 at 7:45 P.M. and then 74 at 9:30 P.M.  Thunder, lightning, and rain begin at 9:30 P.M. and continue for several hours, mostly lightning w/o thunder but some good, loud thunder claps, too.  
            APRIL 25, MONDAY.  There’s been an influx of migrants and we see 2 Gray Catbirds and 7 White-throated Sparrows.  Today probably would have been a better day for the Blackwater birdwalk than yesterday proved to be.  Leave by 9:30 A.M. but first see 23 Buffleheads, 9 Lesser Scaup, 1 Horned Grebe, and 1 Common Loon from the dock while nursing my coffee plus 2 copulating Ospreys being bothered by 5 Fish Crows.  7 Gray Squirrels, 1 in Woods 2 but the other 6 all yard ‘poos polishing off what’s left of the deer corn.  Fair, clear, calm or < 5 m.p.h. out of the E, 65°F.at 7:30 A.M.  
            My favorite, temporary wet area near and N of the intersection of Routes 481 X 309 - rather vacant all spring - finally comes alive today.  Less than an acre, today it sports 7 Greater & 12 Lesser yellowlegs, 14 Least Sandpipers, 1 Great Blue Heron, 4 Canada Geese, 6 Green-winged Teal, and a whopping 34 Painted Turtles, the latter sunning, but, surprisingly, no snipe.  A mediocre total of 68 Turkey Vultures seen on the trip home.
            APRIL 26, TUESDAY.  Brigantine unit of Forsythe N.W.R.  10:15 A.M. – 2:45 P.M.  Fair, 70-75°F., S 20 m.p.h., tide low.  John Alexander, Rob Harting, and myself.  Shorebirds haven’t really built in much but there are still some lingering waterfowl.  Lots of exposed tidal mud being thoroughly exploited by the black ducks, yellowlegs, and teal.
            Double-crested Cormorant 450 (numerous northbound skeins; 450 may be low).  Snowy 7 & Great 8 egrets.  Glossy Ibis 11.  Mute Swan 2.  Brant 360,  1 Snow & 1 Blue goose, both disabled.  Canada Goose 54 incl. 2 broods of downy goslings.  American Black Duck 75.  Northern Pintail 2.  Green-winged Teal 210.  Northern Shoveler 3.  Ruddy Duck 9.  Red-tailed Hawk 3.  Bald Eagle 1 ad.  Osprey 14 (more nesting platforms have been erected than the last time I was here several years ago).  
            Black-bellied Plover 7.  Semipalmated Plover 1.  American Oystercatcher 2.  Greater Yellowlegs 28.  Willet 12 (territorial birds in full cry).  WHIMBREL 72 (actively feeding, I think, on small Fiddler Crabs, out in the slowly emerging Spartina alterniflora saltmarsh).  Least Sandpiper 25.  Dunlin 375 (just starting to come into breeding plumage).  Short-billed Dowitcher 4.  Forster’s Tern 150.
            Also: 3 Redbelly Cooters.  I was surprised to see no Lesser Yellowlegs, harriers, or Boat-tailed Grackles.    
            On the way back to Philadelphia along the Atlantic City Expressway: 1 Red-shouldered Hawk, a Wild Turkey, and a family group of Canada Geese with several downy goslings.
            Best to all. – Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.   		 	   		  

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