LOWER EASTERN SHORE, VIRGINIA & MARYLAND: Kiptopeke, Chincoteague, Rigby’s Folly, Blackwater & Holland Island – July 24-27, 2011.
            ESVNWR: Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge.
            JULY 24, SUNDAY.  Many’s the time I rise at 4:30 or 5 but seldom at 2:30 A.M.  Later is definitely better.  A post-breeding American Kestrel at Eden, MD, S of Salisbury.  Clear, hazy, very hot, SW15+ becoming calm, up to 95°F.  Distant, artillery like, even-spaced thunder far to the N in the late afternoon, which we initially believe to be some sort of battle re-enactment, so uniform it is.  
            Arrive at ESVNWR at 8:45 for the Delmarva Tip butterfly count, organized by Lynn Davidson, conducted within the same circle as Cape Charles Christmas Bird Count.  Chris & Betsy Foster found a MISSISSIPPI KITE at Ramp Lane, ESVNWR, June 23.  They are on hand today as are Brian Taber, Teta Kain, and 7 or 8 others.  I join Lynn and Hal Wierenga in their car; we butterfly until 7:15 P.M. finding 28 species: 
            Black, Eastern Tiger, Spicebush & Palamedes swallowtails, Cabbage White, Clouded & Orange sulphurs, Gray, Juniper & Red-banded hairstreaks, Eastern Tailed-Blue, Variegated Fritillary, Pearl Crescent, Question Mark, Common Buckeye, Red-spotted Purple, Viceroy, Hackberry Emperor, Common Wood-Nymph, Monarch, Silver-spotted, Swarthy, Dun, Least, Zabulon & Salt Marsh skippers, Horace’s Duskywing, and Sachem.  No Red Admirals, ladies, Cloudless Sulphurs, Murning Cloaks, or Little Wood Satyrs. 
            Along Pickett’s Harbor Road W of Route 13 there is a line of large American Hackberries.  In the windless and oppressive late afternoon, temperatures to the mid-90s, Hal & Lynn count 122 Hackberry Emperors, most of them here.  We also see 2 Sphinx Moths, so hummingbird like in behavior and size, one of them attending a blooming Jinsom Weed.
            Some of the areas we are in, parts of ESVNWR, are restricted but Lynn has permission to enter, such as Bull’s Drive-ESVNWR - 2 Gull-billed Terns, 40 White Ibis, 1 American Kestrel, 115 Tree Swallows.  Circling high over Route 13 – 58 Glossy Ibis.  Elsewhere during the course of the day: 2 Grasshopper Sparrows, 2 Yellow-billed Cuckoos, a singing Summer Tanager, 90 Purple Martins, 4 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, 60 Brown Pelicans (Ramp Lane), 6 Spotted Sandpipers, 3 Bald Eagles (one chasing a fish-carrying Osprey), only 1 Northern Bobwhite, 195 Rock Pigeons in one field, 3 migrant Yellow Warblers (ESVNWR headquarters), 2 Clapper Rails, an Orchard Oriole, and 12 Horned Larks.
            Non-avian taxa: Hal finds a huge Honeybee swarm on the trunk of a Black Cherry at Pickett’s Harbor.  3 Eastern Cottontails, 7 deer.  A Green Darner.  A Red-bellied Slider and 3 Painted Turtles in the little scummy woodland pond S of Bull’s Drive and W of Route 600.  We see Catalpa trees (sp?) in several places.  There’s a pretty extensive stretch on the E side of Route 600 N of ESVNWR with Passionflowers.             
            JULY 25, MONDAY.  ESVNWR, Ramp Lane – a ♀ Box Turtle, 7 Least Sandpipers.  Willis Wharf, 10:15: overcast, E5+, 90°F., very low tide, 3 Whimbrel, 1 Snowy & 2 Great egrets, 1 Forster’s Tern.  
            CHINCOTEAGUE CAUSEWAY.  11:30 A.M.  Low tide, lots of birds.  52 Glossy Ibis, 235 Great & 115 Snowy egrets, 1 Black-crowned Night, 6 Tricolored & 11 Little Blue herons, 1 Osprey, 4 Greater Yellowlegs, 35 Boat-tailed Grackles, 8 Short-billed Dowitchers, 13 Brown Pelicans, 20 American Oystercatchers.  There is a big heronry (mostly egrets) far to the N of the highway as seen from Wire Narrows, and, farther E, huge numbers of Laughing Gulls breed in the causeway marsh, resulting in numerous roadkills.
            CHINCOTEAGUE N.W.R., SNOW GOOSE POOL.  Noon – 1:30 P.M.  Handicapped due to lack of a scope, and time.  Walk along the Wildlife Loop, glorious with 100s of blooming, white Hibiscus, and easily find the BLACK-BELLIED WHISTLING DUCK, in Snow Goose Pool where this pool, Black Duck Marsh, and Swan Cove conjoin, less than 100 feet away, busy swishing its bill back and forth in the scummy water like an avocet and similar to how adjacent yellowlegs are feeding.  If a Harlequin Duck looks as if it was designed by a committee, so too does this BBWD with its garish, outré, bright red-pink bill and feet, black belly, and rufous chest, plus its off-the-wall shape in general.  This one is completely unconcerned with the scores of cyclists on the drive, just as they are unconcerned with and unaware of this rare duck.     
            In the same general area as the BBWD:  2 imm. & 2 ad. Least & 4 Forster’s terns, 7 Least & a Pectoral sandpiper, 2 Black Skimmers, 2 Semipalmated Plovers, 18 Glossy Ibis, a Great Blue & a Little Blue heron, a Killdeer, 1 Greater & 2 Lesser yellowlegs, 4 Mallards, a Short-billed Dowitcher.  Nearby are several Spicebush and Black swallowtails and Cabbage Whites.  The swallowtails, most of them, are nectaring on a small patch of Joe-Pye-weed on the edge of Black Duck Marsh.
            Also in the refuge today: 4 Black-necked Stilts (Back Duck Marsh), a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, and, in Swan Cove, 15 Willets and 2 Red-bellied Sliders.  High 80s, hot, E winds 10.  There are hundreds, in toto, not thousands, of shorebirds in the 3 main impoundments, mostly peep and yellowlegs.  In Snow Goose Pool there’s only an inch or 2 of water, many dry areas around the periphery.
            RIGBY’S FOLLY.  Present from 5 P.M. on only.  Sometimes short visits are more productive than a full day.  Heavy rain, at last, a deluge, albeit a short one, c. 4:45-5:15, otherwise overcast becoming party clear, E5, 83-77°F.  The fields have finally been planted.  The rain, predictably, sets off the Green Tree Frogs.  A flock of 6 Great Egrets flies over low, headed due north.  An errant Cedar Waxwing.  A Yellow-billed Cuckoo.  2 Green Herons.  6 Fish Crows.  1 Forster’s Tern.             
            Two Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, in pursuit, startle me when they fly by within inches of my head as I sit of the dock.  Best of all, after I’ve been on the dock for an hour, there’s an immature Black-crowned Night Heron resting on the rip rap near the base of the dock, preening, in fine, fresh plumage.  It doesn’t seem to notice as I walk by it, only about the 20th record for here.  Only see one Firefly.  John Weske arrives to overnight.     
            JULY 26, TUESDAY.  Rigby’s Folly: the only big Marsh Hibiscus I know of here now has 11 white blossoms, up from 2 2 weeks ago.  The little pink blossoming Hibiscus at the boat ramp is not in bloom.  A doe in Field 2.  45 vultures, both species, perched on plastic white fencing S of Route 16 & Stone Boundary Road.  Egypt Road: an American Kestrel, lots of Blue Grosbeaks.  No time to stop for the Dickcissels; I’m running late.  Going down Route 336 to Crocheron there’s a Sika Deer and a roadkill Red Fox.   
            HOLLAND ISLAND, SOUTH SEGMENT, 9 A.M. – 1:15 P.M.  Fair, NE-NW 10, 80s.  Complete bird list: 4 oystercatchers, 2 Peregrine Falcons, 1 yellowthroat, 1♀ Gadwall, 1 black duck, 3 Seaside & 2 Song sparrows, 2 Semipalmated Sandpipers, 3 unID’d peep, 16 Barn Swallows, 3 Fish Crows, 1 Royal Tern, 2 Red-winged Blackbirds, 6 Boat-tailed Grackles, 4 BCNH, 1 YCNH & 7 Tricolored herons, 2 Glossy Ibis, 3 Ospreys, 2 Marsh Wrens plus gulls, egrets, cormorants, pelicans.  1 Diamondback Terrapin, 1 Monarch, 1 Question Mark.   
            There’s 26 of us to band 238 pelicans, many with Paul Kaczak and his Explorers/Venture youth group.  I ride out on John Weske’s newly-acquired boat, a used Nautico with a 70-horse Evinrude, in company with Colin McAllister, Carol McCollough, Tiffany Cox, and Sandy Hirtle.  The west colony has apparently been victimized by frequent above normal high tides this year.  Whereas on May 29 Jared Sparks and I found 103 pelican, 21 Herring Gull, and 18 Double-crested Cormorant active nests, today we only band 38 pelicans, find no cormorant nests, and 3 gull nests.  The Herring Gull nests: 2 with 2 eggs, 1 with 3 eggs.  These eggs tie the latest date listed in the 1996 “Yellow book.”  
            Of the 38 pelican chicks banded 32 have blood drawn by Dr. Erica A. Miller, of Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research, Inc. (www.tristatebird.org), to be tested for West Nile Virus.  From Dr. Miller I learn that, as with gannets, the nostrils of Brown Pelicans are vestigial, do not penetrate all the way through to inside of the bill, perhaps an adaptation to their plunge-diving feeding strategy, whereas with American White Pelicans, which feed by dipping their bills in the water as they swim, the nostrils do go through all the way.
            We have better luck in the woods.  Most of the 200 pelican chicks we band are in nests in the interior of the woods hammock on the north end.  Strange to find many of the nests right on the forest floor or just above it.  Perhaps 40 or more nests have either eggs and/or young too small to band.  Now in its second season of occupancy by nesting cormorants and pelicans, the woods here has become open.  Aside from the trees there isn’t much vegetation, the grasses and weeds succumbing to the potent excreta of the cormorants.  Consequently I fear for the future life of the old trees, too.  
            Most of them are mature American Hackberries with Black Cherries, Persimmons, Black Locusts, and Eastern Redcedars as lesser components with some Poison Ivy and Chokeberry.  Surrounding the hammock is a dense growth of Baccharis halimifolia, where there are many more pelican nests, these being much harder to gain access to.  
            There is one great hackberry as well as a Swamp Cottonwood, neither of them especially tall, but both take three embraces of my extended arms to encompass.  These trees survived the great hurricanes of the 1930s and, more recently, Hurricane Isabel, whose waters were even higher, by more than a foot, but will not perhaps survive the cormorants, and will definitely not survive the erosion which has been taking place for many decades.
            “The woods of Arkady are dead,/And over is their antique joy;/Of late the world on longing fed;/Grey Truth is now her painted toy;” – William Butler Yeats.
            In the interior of the hammock are brick remains of several houses and a few gravestones, perhaps where part of the main street was, a century or so ago, when several 100 souls lived here, and where there was a school and a church.  Tom Horton, in An island out of time: a memoir of Smith Island in the Chesapeake (W. W. Norton, 1996), refers to these Chesapeake Bay hammocks, drawing an analogy to the Sacred Groves of antiquity.  For me they represent a poignant lost world.  There are not that many hammocks on the lower Bay islands. 
            “I sing of the Bay/My song is of the islands/Ere they wash away. …
            “Holland’s old graveyard/Waits while we wait for the waves/While wrens and rails call.
            “The Long-billed Marsh Wren’s/Name was longer than the bird./Now he’s just ’Marsh Wren.’
            “Too prosaic for/The nomenclature committee/He rattles just the same.
            “Rattles in the reeds/In the urgency of June./Progenitor he.” … – from ‘Chesapeake haiku.’
             I have known persons, or their descendants, from other lost worlds, such as pre-revolutionary Russia and Cuba.  Holland Island is a lost world, too, obviously not with the gravitas of these other places, but a significant lost world nevertheless.  Smith Island is becoming a lost world, too, down to 200 inhabitants from the 600 or 700 when I first visited Smith in the 1970s.  
            I find one old bottle, one of those mainly rectangular, narrow (1.25 inches) ones, (7.25 inches long, 2.375 inches wide): “Honey Lugo,” for a cough remedy manufactured in Baltimore.  Colin finds an O.K. Davis baking soda bottle.  Touchstones to this lost world.  
            On a Blackwater refuge bird walk I led, years ago, there was a man who had been born in Holland Island’s last standing house.  This house, surrounded by water on several sides, that lapped right onto the house foundations at high tide, was finally done in by a storm in October 2010.  Its demise, with photographs, was then chronicled in the Washington post, on page one.  
            Robbins S of the Shorter’s Marsh segment of Blackwater N.W.R.: a Red-headed Woodpecker.
            BLACKWATER N.W.R.  3:45 P.M., clear, NW 5-10, 90+°F.  I happen in to the Visitor Center in time to take a phone query from Kathy & Bob Geisler, who have just seen a ♂ Ruddy Duck N of here at Woolford.  
            On the refuge:  2 Semipalmated Plovers, 22 Least & 2 Semipalmated sandpipers (these 3 spp. on the mud at the end of the “Observation Site” spur), 2 Least & 25 Forster’s terns, 1 Greater Yellowlegs, the American White Pelican (0.5 mi. W of the Observation Site spur in the marsh, it’s apparent new station), 8 Double-crested Cormorants, an Eastern Kingbird bringing smoke on an Osprey.  Bizarre to see no eagles or egrets.
            Non-avian taxa: 1 Monarch, 7 Red-bellied Sliders, 6 Painted Turtles..  
            The REFUGE CLOSURE of Wildlife Drive along Pool 5 continues.  Where the exit to Key Wallace Drive goes off from there, at 4:11 P.M., there is a Fox Squirrel where all the Sweet Gums are.  It approaches the car for several minutes, perhaps curious about the very Fox Squirrel-like “stuffed animal” on my dashboard, that, after I had bought it, I found out was made with “real rabbit fur.”    
            East Appleby Avenue in Cambridge: a Monarch. 
            Rigby’s Folly: a fawn in Field 4.
            JULY 27, WEDNESDAY. There’s a well-grown young Red Fox in front of the house on the driveway, stalking, catching, and eating some of the many hundreds of grasshoppers there.  High up in the Rose of Sharon bush at the E end of the house, maybe 20 feet up, is a 3’ Black Ratsnake shed.  A Bald Eagle at Frog Hollow near its nest.  NW 10, clear, 80°F.  Kennedy Lawn Service arrives at 7 A.M.  Leave Rigby’s Folly by 8:45 A.M.  
            Near where Rt. 481 ends at Rt. 301 a big irrigation rig is jetting water over the road.  I’ve often felt that my TrailBlazer is a sentient being, faithful these 239,538 miles, and like to give it some relief by driving through puddles.  An oncoming car is parked so that when the irrigation rig throws water on the road the car is right under it.  In the car a young woman sits, smiling to herself.  Perhaps her car is sentient, too.  
            Route 301, milepost 118, a flock of 9 unID’d peep headed south low over the corn fields; no muddy areas with inverts they want to eat are within miles of here.  Drop in to Sassafras to visit Serge & Paul Duckett, who I know from my Thomas Jefferson University years.  They’ve been in residence recently but I miss them.  Serge lives in Paris, teaches at the Sorbonne, and is M.D., Ph.D. & D.Sc, an authority on the aging brain, and, a character.  Maybe next time they’ll be there.  
            Best to all. – Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.  		 	   		  

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