BLACKWATER N.W.R. & FERRY NECK, DECEMBER 8-10, 2011, a brief, cautious soujourn.
After being confined to the house for over a week with a very debilitating cold it is great to feel halfway well enough to bust out for a brief foray. I play it conservatively and do not walk around our place, confine myself to the yard.
DECEMBER 8, THURSDAY. A fawn (unspotted) in Field 4. 35 Buffleheads seen from the dock out in Irish Creek. There¡¦s a tremendous amount of groundwater in the aftermath of heavy rains. Present from 3:45 P.M. only. Fair, NW 10 m.p.h., 46¢XF.
DECEMBER 9, FRIDAY. Take ¡¥the Mudhen¡¦ down to Gootee¡¦s for winter storage. Fair becoming mostly overcast, 38-low 50¡¦s, SW < 10 m.p.h.
East Appleby St. in Cambridge. An immature Red-tailed Hawk lifts off of the shoulder and I almost hit it.
Egypt Road. Almost always good for a Northern Harrier ¡V 2 in this case including a gray ghost. 475 European Starlings.
Blackwater N.W.R. 7 American White Pelicans out on the Blackwater River, straight out from Pool 5C. Close to gargantuan. As usual they are resting or preening. All the times I¡¦ve seen them here I¡¦ve never seen them hunting. With them are 3 Tundra Swans. Tidal waters are low, nice and muddy. Impoundment waters are very high.
Also: a Fox Squirrel on the Key Wallace Drive shoulder, this one whisking and flicking its tail, which I see Gray Squirrels do much more frequently. 60 Dunlin, a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, 635 Ring-billed Gulls, 2 Greater Yellowlegs, 14 Bald Eagles, 7 Forster¡¦s Terns, 2 immature Double-crested Cormorants (at Sewards), 3 Savannah Sparrows, 2 Hooded Mergansers, 1 American Kestrel, and a lingering Eastern Phoebe.
Along the dike separating Pool 3B and Pool 3C a bearded man, perhaps in his fifties, with binoculars, is walking east. He flushes almost all of the birds in Pool 3A and Pool 3B. At first, before I see him, I think the birds might have been flushed by an eagle. The hundreds of disturbed Canada Geese and Northern Pintails, along with a few Northern Shovelers and American Black Ducks, settle way out on the Blackwater River. This man does not look like an official.
Maple Dam Road. 2 adult Bald Eagles perched together in a deciduous tree. 2 American Kestrels. A group of 60 Mourning Doves on the wires. Thousands of blackbirds in a dense flock, mostly Common Grackles.
Back at Rigby¡¦s Folly an adult Bald Eagle roosting at Frog Hollow, near the nest.
DECEMBER 10, SATURDAY. Full moon, fair, NW 10, 42¢XF. Close down the place and leave by 10:45 A.M. Water still drains, a gentle flow, 2+ days after the rains, out of the ditch along Field 4 into the Waterthrush Pond. See a ¡ñ and then a ¡ð Sharp-shinned Hawk as I go out the drive. Both seem in migration, headed N, into the wind, as counterintuitively, they often seem to do.
South of Cordova and to the E huge areas in the big fields are under rain water, acres and acres of it, with hundreds of attendant Ring-billed Gulls.
About 1.3 miles S of Ruthsburg is a group of 370 Tundra Swans resting and foraging in a big winter wheat field. Some of the adults are displaying, whooping it up. There are a few family groups but < 10% of the birds are young. This is the biggest field I pass on my ¡§commute,¡¨ quite vast, and it seems appropriate that it is ennobled by these splendid birds, that perhaps have come all the way from Alaska, certainly at least as far as from Northwest Territories or Nunavut.
Milepost 100, Route 301. An adult and an immature Bald Eagle laboring over the road, steaming to the W.
Milepost 117.3 a d.o.r. adult Red Fox.
Plenty of room on the Virginia Christmas Counts I organize should you be interested. Nassawadox, Sunday, December 18; Cape Charles, Friday, December 30.
Even though the professional ornithological journals are written in statistics, chemisty, and/or physics as much as in English, there is always something a lay person such as myself can find of interest and even comprehend.
In the October 2011 issue of the Auk in the book review section are many items worth noting. One tells of a Common Redpoll that was found in winter in Michigan one year, in far eastern Russia in another, places c. 8,000 km. apart (p. 802).
Equally sobering is a review of work by H. C. Hanson, who posits there are 193 subspecies of white-cheeked (i.e., Canada) geese (p. 805). It would be SO much simpler if there were only 93. Will there be a field guide to Canada Geese? Makes the looming Red Crossbill splits look like a day at the beach.
Best to all. ¡V Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.
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