Part 1, May 21-28.  LOWER EASTERN SHORE OF MARYLAND, May 21-31, 2011.  Observations are at Ferry Neck on our property, Rigby’s Folly, unless indicated otherwise.  Liz & Harry Armistead.
            ABBREVIATION:  ISS = in sight simultaneously.
            MAY 21, Saturday.  A roadkill Beaver in Delaware S of the 301 Plaza.  At the routes 481 X 309 small wetland 4 Least Sandpipers, 1 Killdeer, 2 Lesser Yellowlegs, and 2 Painted Turtles.  
            Drove across our Big Field to Lucy Point = some lingering waterbirds: 2 Common Loons, 1 ♂ Lesser Scaup, and 15 Surf Scoters plus 2 Forster’s Terns.  Visibility here about the best I’ve ever seen with the individual pound net stakes S of Black Walnut Point standing out clear as a bell at 7 miles distance and 32X – if there were Brown Pelicans flying around among them it would be EASY to distinguish them.  
            From our dock: 5 Cow-nosed Rays, 3 Gray Squirrels in a neighbor’s yard, a Green Heron, a Spotted Sandpiper, a Muskrat, 1 Snowy Egret, a Pileated Woodpecker, and 8 Diamondback Terrapin.  THIS year’s screwy place for the Carolina Wrens to build a nest: inside a folding chair on the front porch.  A lusty Green Treefrog chorus at dusk.  A good start to what will be an 11-day visit.  
            MAY 23.  2 Chuck-will’s-widows at 5:34 A.M., 1 in Woods 4, t’other in Woods 6.  2 Snowy Egrets.  Last night TOTALLY calm, so peaceful, not even a light zephyr.  Trimmed the overhanging vege along the driveway bordering Field 2 plus such on the Lucy Point, Warbler, and Choptank trails.
            EGYPT ROAD:  2 singing ♂ Dickcissels at their by now usual spot across the road from the Duke’s Landing/Henry’s Overlook sign.  1 Sika Deer.  1 Redbelly Turtle with a damaged carapace (small right rear section missing).  An aseasonal SHARP-SHINNED HAWK.
            BLACKWATER N.W.R.  7 a.m. – 1 p.m. (official refuge birdwalk 8 a.m. – 12:15 P.M. with Merritt P. Bailey, Jr., Pamela Burdell, Nathalie Gallet, Michele & Rob Green, Mea Kaemmerlen, Mary Konchar, Charles Marcantonio, Ann Plattner, Mary Margaret Whichard, Levin I. Willey & myself).  
            For 1st time a bright red, convertible Corvette is part of the birdwalk cavalcade.  I was hoping for one of the new $2,250,000 Bugattis.  Maybe next time.  Water levels moderately high.  Warm, fair becoming overcast, little wind, calm becoming SE 5-10, 63-80°F.  A gem.  
            61 species.  Of most interest:  25 Mallards incl. a ♀ with 8 downy young.  A lingering ♂ Green-winged Teal (Pool 3B).  Only 12 Bald Eagles.  An unsolicited Virginia Rail.  2 Semipalmated Plovers.  12 Semipalmated & 6 Least Sandpipers.  135 Dunlin.  Curiously, NO Least or Forster’s terns.  We miss the white pelican.  
            2 Yellow-billed Cuckoos.  2 Red-headed Woodpeckers (in and out of a tree cavity).  1 Acadian Flycatcher.  2 Horned Larks in flight over the Little Blackwater River & Pool 1, an odd location.  2 migrant Bank Swallows.  4 Brown-headed Nuthatches.  1 Ovenbird.  3 Summer Tanagers.  4 Blue Grosbeaks.  5 Indigo Buntings.  2 Eastern Meadowlarks.  10 Orchard Orioles.  
            I can’t ever remember NOT hearing a Wood Thrush along Wildlife Drive but so far this year … no luck.
            Also on the refuge – non-avian taxa:  BUTTERFLIES: a ZEBRA SWALLOWTAIL, a Tiger & 3 Black Swallowtails, a Red Admiral, 3 Cabbage Whites, 2 Monarchs & 4 Red-spotted Purples.  MAMMALS: 3 Eastern Cottontails.  HERPS: A roadkill Common Snapping Turtle, 2 Bullfrogs (Pool 1), 4 Northern Water Snakes, 1 Black Rat Snake, a Fowler’s Toad (greeted with enthusiasm by some of the participants, right next to the temporary visitor center), and 10 Redbelly Turtles.  
            The latter I have heard called variously Redbelly, Red-belly, Red-bellied, or Redbellied at the first instance … then Cooter, Slider, Turtle, or Terrapin at the second.  I will stick with Redbelly Turtle (Pseudemys rubriventris) as per the 3rd edition of the Peterson guide … unless instructed otherwise by the herpetological thought police.  Lately I’ve heard that Cooter is the correct surname. Help!  Whatever the case, they’re a fine-looking reptile, imposingly large in comparison with the commoner Painted Turtle, which is also a handsome beast.    
            HURLOCK WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANT.  1:45-2:15.  12 Canada Geese, 14 Mallards, 15 RUDDY DUCKS (7 in the NE cell, 4 in the SE, 4 in the SW, none in the NE; no sign of any youngsters; On May 19 Levin Willey saw 11 ruddies here plus a pair of Wood Ducks with 9 young).  Also present, the overwhelming majority in the NW cell, 103 turtles; all the ones I’ve been able to ID here over the years have been Redbelly Turtles but many of those today looked too small to be such.  
            There’s a nice collection of shorebirds in the N part of the NW cell, which is especially scummy and rather well-vegetated, incl.: 5 White-rumped, 40 Semipalmated, 8 Least & 3 Spotted Sandpipers, 2 BLACK-NECKED STILTS, 11 Semipalmated Plovers, and 2 Killdeer.  S of the cells: 1 ♂ & 3 ♀ Wild Turkeys and a Grasshopper Sparrow and Horned Lark elsewhere.  1 Cabbage White.   
            MAY 23.  Highlight is a big ♂ Broadhead Skink on the front porch.  The bright red head is impressive.  This lizard is featured in the Washington Post, Tuesday, May 24, 2011, pp. E1-2, “A redhead with sex appeal,” and “hot head,” in the Urban Jungle column.  Here we go with the nomenclature wars again.  The newspaper calls it Broad-headed, the Peterson guide Broadhead.  They can attain a 12.75” length.
            There’s a dead Gray Catbird on the deck of my boat ‘the Mudhen’, which I launch today (the boat, not the bird).  9 deer.  Trim overhang on the driveway, S side of Field 4, and much reduce a large fallen Red Maple limb on the lawn, a source of hard-won, hand-sawed firewood now.  As per a recent New Yorker, I came, I sawed, I conquered.
            Overcast becoming fair, 65-83°F., SW 10+ m.p.h.
            BUTTERFLIES:  2 Tiger Swallowtails, 4 Delaware Skippers, 3 Red-spotted Purples, a Spring Azure, a Monarch, a Question Mark, 8 Cabbage Whites (the starling of butterflies) & a Silver-spotted Skipper.  A calling Yellow-billed Cuckoo.  A fat Fowler’s Toad in the yard; their black-and-gold eyes are spectacular.  
            Lars & Nancy Egede-Nissen arrive and there ensue several days of singing, poetry, wine, crab cakes, jokes, discussions of health issues, and much catching up along with recounting shared adventures and acquaintances going back to 1954 when Lars and I were uncertain, insecure novitiates at a then (for a time) scary (but now much-loved), rather stern boarding school.  There wasn’t any caning, but one felt that at any moment there might be.         
            MAY 24.  Mostly just sit around and talk, eat.  BBQ burgers, steak, hot dogs.  An Eastern Cottontail by the front porch, seldom seen the past few years, perhaps because of a burgeoning presence of Horned Owls and Red Foxes.  Pileated Woodpecker for 3rd straight day … still no yard breeding records … maybe this time?  2 Diamondback Terrapin.  Fair, SW 10 m.p.h., reaches up to 83°F.  Some sprinkles.  1 Snowy Egret.
            MAY 25, Wednesday.  21 Turkey Vultures ISS.  12 Ospreys ISS.  1 each of Common & Least terns.  Butterflies: the 1st Little Wood Satyr of the year.  A Muskrat and 2 Northern Water Snakes, these 2 creatures almost always seen only from the dock.  3 Red Fox kits seen gamboling on the driveway by the bend, their usual station this spring.  3 Bald Eagles.  5 Black Vultures.  
            Lars & Nancy treat us to dinner at the Crab Claw, where we have a nice table with water on 2 sides of us, margaritas, and a bachelors’ cotillion of ♂ Mallards waiting for scraps of biscuit.  A Chuck-will’s-widow calling from Woods 2 at 9:13 P.M.  A Green Tree Frog on the front porch at 9:15 P.M.  
            Lower humidity today.  Pleasant.  Clear or fair, NW 5 or calm, temperature to 82°F.
            MAY 26, Thursday.  Hazy, fair, SW 10+, 72-91°F.  5 deer.  A wet spot on the E side along Bellevue Road halfway between Royal Oak and the Ferry Neck Road turnoff has 3 Least & a Semipalmated sandpiper plus 2 Semipalmated Plovers foraging.  Lars & Nancy leave for Virginia.
            ELLIOTT ISLAND ROAD, an unofficial trip of the Talbot Bird Club, with participants Shirley Bailey, David Bent, Vince De Sanctis, Pat Groller, Gordon Jennings, Colin McAllister, Dave Palmer, Les Roslund, Matt Whitbeck, and myself.  7 P.M. until midnight.  An hour or so of that is spent simply driving from Vienna to get to the marshes and back again afterwards.  48 species.  
            I should have cranked in extra hours or so of daylight.  My bad.  If so we would probably not have missed Saltmarsh Sparrow, Boat-tailed Grackle, and Black-necked Stilt.  Tide rising and over some of the road N of the Pokata Creek bridge at the end of our visit.  The S wind a bit too strong, 15 m.p.h. most of the time, interferes with our hearing the birds.  Clear.  Bugs not too bad.  At Cambridge at 12:30 A.M. (Friday, technically) still 77°F. and, worse, 78°F. at Rigby’s Folly at 1:10 A.M. the same night/morning.  
            Highlights: 1 Black Rail (heard to growl twice but by only 4 of us).  
            A flock of 90 WHIMBREL at 7:30 P.M. in rapid flight to the NW.  It’s always stirring, thrilling really, to see these impressive shorebirds near the start of their great run to the Arctic tundra, Hudsonian Curlews indeed, which is accomplished, as has been verified in some individual birds by satellite transmitters, by NON-STOP FLIGHT in 5 or 6 straight days.  One’s heart goes out to these splendid, elegant birds in their heroic migrations, some of which begin, in the spring, in Brazil.  Wish them fair winds.  They bulk up by devouring Fiddler Crabs in the Eastern Shore of Virginia saltmarshes beginning in April.
            3 calling Least Bitterns.  A Pied-billed Grebe.  10 American Black Ducks.  2 Blue-winged Teal, scarce or non-existent as breeders here for the past few years.  1 Northern Harrier.  1 Wild Turkey.  2 Clapper, 1 King & 17 Virginia rails.  3 Common Moorhens.  3 Semipalmated Plovers - the only shorebird migrant other than the Whimbrel.  5 Willets.  7 Marsh Wrens (probably too low).  c. 45 Seaside Sparrows.  1 Song Sparrow.   
            NON-AVIAN NOTES: 1 meteor (that’s REALLY quite non-avian).  7 Sika & 1 White-tailed deer.  A Black Rat Snake d.o.r.  1 Redbelly Turtle.  1 Bullfrog.  4 big choruses of Green Tree Frogs.  Cope’s Gray Tree Frogs calling at 5 spots (the best spring I’ve ever had for them).  Curiously: no Fowler’s Toads or Southern Leopard Frogs.  
            On May 23 Levin Willey and Gordon Jennings saw 12 Mute Swans from Elliott Island Road, a huge number anymore following the “control” measures of federal and state officials.  On May 14 with 14 observers in 9 party areas in the county driving over 700 miles none were found.
            MAY 27, Friday.  2 Red Fox kits on the driveway at 1:07 A.M.  4 Least Terns comprise a surprising 2nd highest count for here, the highest being merely 5 on a date the record of which I have temporarily misplaced.  4 American Crows harass an ad Red-tailed Hawk.  1 Pileated Woodpecker, which spends much time in or near the yard.  A Yellow-billed Cuckoo.  Liz and I take a 5.4 mile boat ride up Irish Creek where we find 5 Osprey nests not visible from our shoreline, in contrast to the now 10 that are.  Two Purple Martin houses directly across Irish Creek are occupied by martins.  
            With the big, clunky, 8’ crowbar leverage the large maple limb, perhaps 400 lbs. worth, off of the lawn. (refer to orthopedic dept.)
            Fair becoming mostly overcast, SW 10+, up to 87°F., 82°F. at 7 P.M.
            MAY 28, Saturday.  Daughter Anne and her fiancé Derek Ayres arrive.  Take them on a 2.3 mi. boat ride up Irish Creek.  Coming up the drive they see a Wild Turkey and a Red Fox kit.  We’ve seen 1-3 Gray Squirrels each day, a most resourceful mammal, often feeding on fallen Red Mulberry berries near the garage.  Liz sees 2 ♂ Indigo Buntings engaged in combat.  
            Best wishes. – Harry Armistead, Philadelphia. 		 	   		  

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