PEACH ORCHARD POINT (Virginia) & FERRY NECK (Talbot County, Maryland), June 25-28, 2011.  Observations are at our MD property, Rigby’s Folly, on Ferry Neck, unless indicated otherwise. 
            JUNE 25, Saturday.  32 Turkey Vultures on the way down.  Present only from 2 P.M. onwards.  Out at Lucy Point 3 lingering Surf Scoters and the ♂ Ruddy Duck plus a Common Tern.  A massive immature Bald Eagle is perched at Holland Point.  A Wild Turkey in the yard, another one in Field 4.  Three deer in Field 4.  Some baby Fowler’s Toads are hopping about.  For half an hour a young Gray Squirrel forages and explores the lawn out by the garage, oblivious to our activities nearby.  It had better become less naïve.  One Red Fox.   
            Five Eastern Cottontails on Gunners Range Road.   
            Fair, 86°F.on arrival, wind N < 5 m.p.h. or else calm.  Do some work on the fallen Black Locust on Irish Creek trail.  John Weske arrives to spend the night.    
            JUNE 26, Sunday.  Alarm goes off at 4:45 A.M.  Ugh!  John and Liz hear a Great Horned Owl at 5 A.M.  The obligatory ♂ Indigo Bunting in-the-headlights-on-the-driveway; under such conditions they are a striking, incandescent blue-green - glowing almost – and we most always flush one under these conditions at this time of day.  Two deer in Field 2 and 5 in Field 4 a few minutes later.  A Chuck-will’s-widow calls from Woods 5 at 5:15 A.M.  On the Easton Bypass (Route 322), near the turnoff to Oxford and the Woodchuck excavations, there’s a fresh Red Fox d.o.r.   
            While John and I are away banding Liz hears the first Cicada of the year and sees a Yellow-billed Cuckoo.  The Rose of Sharon bush (Hibiscus syriacus, or althea bush) is in good bloom now, the first blossoms noticed on June 17, mostly pink.  Hummingbirds like them.  On returning from Virginia I run into Ben Weems, who has seen 15 deer in our fields. 
            PEACH ORCHARD POINT, ACCOMACK COUNTY, VIRGINIA.  John Weske (bander in charge), Lisa Schreffler, Bill Lurz, Morgan Lurz, and myself.   
            This is in essence an extension of extreme southern Smith Island, Maryland.  It’s all saltmarsh.  Perhaps there really was an orchard here 100 years ago.  A rim of Baccharis halimifolia and Iva frutescens lines its east edge not too far from the small towns of Rhodes Point and Tylerton.  In and among these bushes there’s a small colony of cormorants and pelicans with a few gulls, too.   
            We are here c. 9:30 A.M. – 1 P.M. and band 132 Brown Pelicans and 104 Double-crested Cormorants, I’d say at least 95% of the bandable chicks present.  There are about as many more of both, maybe a few less, to tag later, that are now either unhatched eggs or young too small to band, naked chicks, if you will.  It being Sunday there are no workboats about. 
            During the banding most of the adult birds, esp. the pelicans, sit patiently on the water’s surface in a tidal gut just W of Peach Orchard Point.  The bigger pelican and cormorant colonies are just W of here < half a mile away and in the vicinity of South Point Marsh, where banding forays are planned later in the summer, the eggs and young there being less advanced than at Peach Orchard Point, according to John’s early reconnaissance.   
            Complete P.O.P. bird list: 1 Great Blue, 2 Tricolored, 3 Little Blue & 2 Yellow-crowned Night herons, 2 American Oystercatchers, 1 Bald Eagle, 3 Ospreys, 8 Boat-tailed Grackles, 4 Glossy Ibis, 3 Great Egrets, 6 Seaside Sparrows (incl., a nearly tailless but flying juvenile), 3 Laughing Gulls, 1 Clapper Rail, 3 Royal & 3 Forster’s terns, plus a few Herring and Great Black-backed gulls.  There are 100s of Seaside Dragonlets and we see only one Diamondback Terrapin.  It’s disappointing not to see a Northern Harrier, less so any Mute Swans.  
            Fair, winds N 15-5, high 70s to low 80s, just about perfect.  High tide at nearby Watts Island is 8:47 A.M.  Ergo we see no exposed mudflats or sand here under these conditions.  Most of those would be well to our west anyway.  
            Outboard problems and it takes us 3 hours to motor back to Crisfield but the time passes well with good conversation, refreshing drinks, and a most pleasant, mild quartering sea. 
            CRISFIELD:  1 imm. Bald Eagle, 4 Green Herons, 2 Glossy Ibis, 2 Black Skimmers, and Lisa hears a Song Sparrow.  She is studying the Atlantic race of the sparrow towards a Ph.D. at George Mason University.  
            JUNE 27, Monday.  Two Cedar Waxwings, a most unpredictable bird.  A Black Swallowtail, not often seen here.  Four Wild Turkeys in the Clover Field (Field 3).  A beautiful Red-spotted Purple - Roger Tory Peterson’s favorite butterfly - hangs around the front porch for half an hour, often investigating my mud-splattered and drying socks and shoes, which are recovering from exposure to Peach Orchard Point slime and mire.   
            A lovely fawn, about the size of a fox, gambols away from me at close range on the Warbler Trail.  Seven deer in Field 2.  There isn’t much Jimson Weed in our fields anymore but the few I see are blooming.  Three Rock Pigeons, seldom see here.  Spend an hour working on the Olszewski and Warbler trails. 
            Going out the driveway, past the bend, there’s a Yellow-billed Cuckoo right on the gravel.  It doesn’t fly and when I am close enough so that the car hood obscures it I dismount from the car and peek around in front and it’s still there, four feet away, and finally flies off.  I suspect the cuckoos are dining on the abundant grasshoppers.   
            JUNE 28, Tuesday.  Leave by 11 A.M.  Mostly overcast, occasional light rain, 77°F. at start, calm.  Seven deer in Field 4.  Lately about one-third of the deer we see are bucks in velvet.  A scolding Gray Squirrel, which seems to find the drizzle offputting, in the Magnolia grandiflora.  Our fields, hit with herbicides a month ago, have reverted to being mostly green with various weeds now.  A Tufted Titmouse sings in the yard, somewhat unusual.  A Snowy Egret in the tidal marsh at routes 33 X 322.  Along Route 481 a fat Woodchuck.  38 Turkey Vultures on the way home to Pennsylvania. 
            STORM AFTERMATH (cont’d.).  The violent storm of Friday evening, June 17, had winds clocked at up to 83 m.p.h. in Oxford.  After 8 hours of clearing the debris at Rigby’s Folly, I am still faced with another 2 or 3, most of the remaining damage along the Warbler Trail, that will, unfortunately, require the use of the dreaded chainsaw.  However, “I thank whatever gods may be” (a William Ernest Henley phrase, from ‘Invictus’) that there has been no damage to the house and garage. 
            CORRIGENDUM.  In a recent posting concerning South Marsh Island I’d listed birds that formerly bred there and mistakenly included American Oystercatcher, having just seen several pairs right there.  I’d intended to include Black Skimmer but the 2 species got scrambled in my mind. 
            Best to all. – Harry Armistead, Philadelphia, home of the Phillies. 		 	   		   
 
############################ 
 
To unsubscribe from the MDOSPREY list: 
write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] 
or click the following link: 
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=MDOSPREY&A=1