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9540 Surf Scoters, 53 white pelicans, 126 deer & other spectacles: Talbot & Dorchester, March 8-13, 2012.

From:

Harry Armistead

Reply-To:

Harry Armistead

Date:

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 19:40:18 +0000

9540 SURF SCOTERS, 53 WHITE PELICANS, 126 DEER & OTHER SPECTACLES:  FERRY NECK, PICKERING CREEK, LINKWOOD, BLACKWATER N.W.R., TAYLOR¡¦S ISLAND, SWAN HARBOR & HOOPER¡¦S ISLAND, MARCH 8-13, 2012.  Liz & Harry Armistead and family.
 
A time of some superlative high counts I never thought I¡¦d ever see. 
 
MARCH 8, THURSDAY.  Eleven Tundra Swans are in the big fields S of Ruthsburg.  George spots an Osprey over Cordova.  At Rigby¡¦s Folly, where we arrive c. 3:30, it¡¦s mostly overcast, 66¢XF., winds SW 25.  See 9 deer.  In the cove are 21 Mallards (10¡ñ, 11¡ð).   Nearby are 4 Eastern Bluebirds, 25 Fish Crows, 30 Buffleheads, a Common Loon, 225 Lesser Scaup, 1 Killdeer, 90 Ruddy Ducks, and a Canada Goose cripple.  
 
Spring Peepers, NJ Chorus Frogs, and 3 Painted Turtles.
 
George gives his talk ¡§pOrnithology¡¨, on birds¡¦ breeding strategies, to the Talbot Bird Club; he¡¦ll give it again on Monday at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale.  Full moon.  Daughter, Anne, and soon-to-be son-in-law Derek Ayres arrive.
 
MARCH 9, FRIDAY.  George and I take off for the swamps.  
 
Pickering Creek Audubon Center.  We¡¦re here 7:30-10 but no luck with the Virginia¡¦s Warbler ¡V don¡¦t even hear it.  1 Cackling & 95 Canada geese, 22 Wood, 4 Ring-necked & 8 American Black ducks, 40 Gadwalls, 85 Mallards, 40 shovelers, 20 pintails, 50 Green-winged Teal, 20 Hooded Mergansers, 2 Field Sparrows (singing), 2 Pied-billed Grebes, 1 apparent adult Golden & 3 Bald eagles, 4 Black & 12 Turkey vultures, 2 Red-tailed Hawks, 8 Tree Swallows, and 41 American Coots plus Spring Peepers.  Overcast, 50¢XF., NW 15+, cold.  George submitted his own list here to eBird. 
 
Cambridge: 17 Double-crested Cormorants.  An Osprey at the N end of Malkus Bridge.
 
Linkwood Wildlife Management Area.  11:30-12:15.  Good luck at the little wooded stream on the way in through Big Buck Rod and Gun Club: a highly-colored Orange-crowned Warbler (giving call notes; photographed by George), 1 Golden-crowned & 2 Ruby-crowned kinglets, a Tree Swallow, 105 Ring-billed Gull flyovers, 5 Carolina Chickadees, 2 Tufted Titmice, 2 Bald Eagles, a singing Pine Warbler, a towhee, and some NJ Chorus Frogs.  George submitted a list to eBird.  This has been a good year regionally for Orange-crowned Warblers.  
 
Northwest Linkwood area, Vincent Road, W of Route 50.  George is curious about this area as we motor past it on Route 50 because of its weedy, unkempt, brushy aspect.  We return and walk around in the midst of weedy areas, discarded, huge, 3-foot+-wide tires, piles of logs and pilings, firewood sections heaped 15+ feet high, big, downed cable lines, defunct and not defunct trailers and trucks, sawdust piles, ditches, abandoned cabins, heavy logging equipment, and a feral cat adjacent to 3 huge grain elevators and some working heavy equipment and 18-wheel trucks.  Lots of abandoned materials.  It is a sight.  George entered his own list for here on eBird.  I would have expected a good chance for a House Wren, or Lincoln¡¦s &/or White-crowned sparrow.  Leave here at 1 P.M.
 
3 Carolina Chickadees, 2 Carolina Wrens, 1 robin, 5 mockingbirds, 2 Bald Eagles, 5 Black Vultures, a Hairy Woodpecker, a sapsucker, 2 kingfishers, a towhee, 5 cardinals, and a meadowlark.  A Barred Owl calls spontaneously, then comes in and perches, affording us great looks at close range in broad daylight..  This is near sizeable Higgins Millpond, which explains the owl and kingfishers.  
 
Egypt Road.  2 Red-tailed Hawks, 2 Bald Eagles, and a Northern Harrier, which harasses one of the redtaileds.
 
Blackwater N.W.R.  1:45-3:45 P.M.  50s, clearing off, NW 10-15.  53 AMERICAN WHITE PELICANS, with 10 visible, feeding, far to the SSE from the Observation Spur, perhaps a mile away, plus a group of 43 visible from Pool 3 to the S resting on the S shore of Blackwater River with the 1st group still in sight in the distance.  This is, I think, a new Maryland high count.
 
240 Snow Geese, high and apparently headed out to the N.  195 Tundra Swans.  12 Gadwalls.  3 singing Pine Warblers.  410 Northern Shovelers (Pools 3 & 5).  40 Green-winged Teal.  20 Bald Eagles.  2 Northern Harriers.  1 American Kestrel.  5 American Coots.  1 Virginia Rail (Observation Spur).  7 Greater Yellowlegs.  70 Forster¡¦s Terns.
 
Non-avian taxa:  Southern Leopard Frog, 3 Painted Turtles, 1 Redbelly Cooter, and 2 Eastern Cottontails.
 
Just S of the Easton Bypass Route 322 X Oxford Road are 65 deer at 4:15 P.M.  The field to the W is notorious as a deer gathering place (and see under March 12 below).
 
In a field near the intersection of Ferry Neck Road and Bellevue Road: 17 deer.  
 
Out at Lucy Point 5-6:30 P.M. it¡¦s dead calm and excellent visibility for a ¡§sea watch¡¨.  George & I see 9540 SURF SCOTERS, 6 Common Loons, 2 Bald Eagles, 80 Canada Geese, 3 Horned Grebes, 8 Red-breasted Mergansers, 16 Tundra Swans, 780 Lesser Scaup, a Great Blue Heron, 8 Northern Gannets, 20 Common Goldeneyes, 3 Northern Pintails, 60 Herring Gulls & 150 Buffleheads but most curiously, no Long-tailed Ducks.  
 
The scoter estimate is several thousand above the previous high for here.  I ¡§count¡¨ by tens until 6000, then by hundreds to 9500, then again by tens from 9500 to 9540.  Probably well over 10,000 there; during my estimate time big flocks fly in from up the Choptank River that I may not have seen before as I swept from E to W with the scope.  A perfect sunset. 
 
Also at Rigby¡¦s Folly: 2 Gray Squirrels & 14 Tundra Swan in the cove.  Anne & Derek go in to Easton to see ¡§the Artist.¡¨     
 
MARCH 10, SATURDAY.  Daughter, Mary, and our first grandchild, David Tucker Solomonov (fondly known as DTS; 20 lbs. & almost 8 months old), arrive as does George¡¦s wife, Laura Oppenheim.  Mary¡¦s husband, an active restaurateur and chef, is tied down by business responsibilities.  
 
Harmless family activities but also something of a work weekend: we tidy up one side of the garage to be used by the caterers for Anne & Derek¡¦s wedding in May.  Tidewater Cleaning Service takes the discards away.  Nice folks.  Of the 3 such services identified by Mary this is the only one she referred to whose contact, Kathy Lill, she described as ¡§nice¡¨.  The whole family is. 410-200-0290.  We also chainsaw fallen Black Locusts from 2011 as well as other limbs for firewood and remove sticks from the lawn.
 
Clear, NW 15 becoming calm, 38-50¢XF., a very low tide at 12:15 P.M. with exposed mud out past the end of the dock.  Out on Irish Creek: 65 Canvasbacks, 1075 Lesser Scaup, 4 Common Goldeneyes, 2 Red-breasted Mergansers, the 21 Mallards still maintaining station, 65 Tundra Swans, and 50 Buffleheads.  George finds a Brown Thrasher, a Cooper¡¦s Hawk, a Hairy Woodpecker, an Eastern Meadowlark, and 2 Hermit Thrushes, the latter feeding on English Ivy berries.  
 
George and Laura go to Pickering Creek where he has good views of the VIRGINIA¡¦S WARBLER for 15 minutes c. 4 P.M.  Liz and I enjoy another sunset, a beauty, at Lucy Point, see 6 Northern Gannets, 34 Double-crested Cormorants (a lot for so early in the year), 4 Northern Pintails, 100s of Lesser Scaup, and calling Tundra Swans.  After sunset I count 25 jet contrails in the western skies.  From the looks of things the 1000s of waterfowl seen yesterday evening are still present.      
 
MARCH 11, SUNDAY.  Laura goes for a 4-mile run before breakfast.  She and the others all leave; it¡¦s a poignant, rather empty feeling when Liz and I are alone after
these visitations.  I comb the Irish Creek & Choptank River trails for plastic debris, bag it, and leave it for Tidewater Cleaning Services.
 
245 Ruddy Ducks and 105 Canvasbacks in Irish Creek.  3 Northern Gannets, 2 of them plunge diving.  2 Common Loons.  Rigby¡¦s Folly is not that woodpeckerish a place but on the NW edge of the Big Field in one binocular field I have a ¡ð and ¡ñ Downy, a ¡ñ Red-bellied, and a ¡ð Hairy, all in the Willow there at a distance of c. 75 feet.  3 Gray Squirrels in sight simultaneously, sorta, 2 seen, the 3rd seen as a shadow only.  Try as I might I can not locate it.  Liz sees a meadowlark.  With her I watch, for the 3rd straight evening, the sun set, another good one.  
 
As one looks out from Lucy Point there is the Sharps Island light (10 miles distant) and to its right the 3 huge stacks on the Patuxent River (25 miles away).  In between them (visually) a Bald Eagle twists and whirls in unsuccessful pursuit of Buffleheads.  At Kiptopeke I once saw an immature eagle fly right in front of me low carrying a ¡ð Bufflehead then disappear into a Loblolly Pine woods, flying below the canopy.  No Tundra Swans today.  38-56¢XF. (53¢XF. at 7:30 P.M.), clear, winds SW 15-10-<10.  Another eagle harasses scaup at 6:20 P.M.
 
MARCH 12, MONDAY.  At Rigby¡¦s Folly Liz hears Spring Peepers and a Pine Warbler, sees an adult Bald Eagle.  5 deer in Woods 5.  66¢XF. at 5:45 P.M., 61¢XF. at 9:30 P.M.  I take off for Dorchester County.  
 
My prejudice (postjudice, actually) about classical music stations messing up the weather report is reinforced this morning, when, 3 times on my way to Blackwater, 89.5 intones the weather for the previous Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday as if it¡¦s a current forecast.  I might feel differently if they¡¦d play more Richard Strauss.  
 
Egypt Road: 2 Gadwalls, 12 Green-winged Teal, 6 Mallards, and a Horned Lark.  
 
Blackwater N.W.R.  8:45-9:45 A.M. & 3:45-4:14 P.M.  35 American White Pelicans, 370 Northern Shovelers, 13 Ring-necked Ducks (Pool 1), 1 American Kestrel, 35 Forster¡¦s Terns, 65 Tundra Swans,110 Snow Geese, 1 Northern Harrier, 5 Northern Pintails. 14 Bald Eagles, and 31 American Coots plus a Snapping & 9 Painted Turtles, 8 Redbelly Cooters and a Sika Deer.  Water in most impoundments very high, in tidal areas very low.  The big white birds - swans, pelis & snows - are on the S side of the Blackwater River, perhaps 1-2 miles distant, both times. 
 
Taylor¡¦s Island.  10:30 A.M. ¡V 1:15 P.M.:  Northern Gannet 157, Lesser Scaup 620 (580 of these on Slaughter Creek), Horned Grebe 64, 6 Common & 2 Red-throated loons, 80 Surf Scoters, 67 Long-tailed Ducks, 2 Red-breasted Mergansers, 3 Bald Eagles, 10 Tundra Swans, 20 Mallards, 7 Northern Pintails, and 25 Buffleheads plus 1 unID¡¦d sulphur and 14 Painted Turtles (along the little pond at the entrance to T.I.F.Cg.).  Some gannets are plunge diving.  Four huge ships pass by, one of them trailing 45 gannets off its stern (which may mean it is illegally dumping garbage).   
 
Taylor¡¦s Island Family Campround provides a fine prospect looking out across Chesapeake Bay where it is at its narrowest anywhere S of Kent Island.  Free-ranging, large, domestic rabbits hunker under trailers.  House Sparrows, pigeons, cowbirds, and starlings plus Gray Squirrels feed on corn under the 3 small Cypresses just outside the camp store.  If you go it¡¦s nice to patronize the store to show appreciation for tolerating us who look out across the Bay to the Cove Point light, the Calvert cliffs, and the ominous liquefied natural gas complex.  Have a nice talk with Ray Carbonetta, who has a house at Punch Island.
 
Parsons Creek Neck, a unit of Blackwater N.W.R. c. 3 mi. N. of Beaverdam Creek, 1:45 P.M.: 5 Bald Eagles, incl. 2 at the nest in a now dead Loblolly Pine off to the W, 7 Green-winged Teal, and 8 Mallards.  20 American Black Ducks at Beaverdam Creek.
 
Swan Harbor, 2 P.M: very low tide.  Dunlin 665, Sanderling 8, Tundra Swan 52, Northern Gannet 3, Red-breasted Merganser 4, Surf Scoter 8, Common Loon 1, Bonaparte¡¦s Gull 3, Osprey 1 (headed out, to the N).  Deep water birds are very far away from this vantage point.  Also seen: 2 unID¡¦d sulphurs and a Fox Squirrel by the turnaround.  Winds SW 15-20, 52¢XF., clear.
 
Hooper¡¦s Island, 2:15-3:15 D.S.T.  Winds SW 20.  Surf Scoter 820 (most are in flight, otherwise they would have been difficult to see and estimate in the roiling waters), Lesser Scaup 85, Northern Gannet 6, Killdeer 1, Horned Grebe 8 (1 in full breeding plumage), Tundra Swan 190, Common Loon 6, Red-breasted Merganser 5, Bufflehead 40, Bald Eagle 2, American Oystercatcher 1 (on one of the experimental jetties S of Narrows Ferry Bridge), Rock Pigeon 5.  No goldeneyes or longtaileds.   
 
Revisited: 5 P.M., just S of the Easton Bypass Route 322 X Oxford Road in sight simultaneously: 126 DEER, one of which may be in labor.  But I¡¦m running late and don¡¦t linger.  Consequently I may have missed one or two deer. 
 
MARCH 13, TUESDAY.  From our dock: 870 Lesser Scaup & 75 Ruddy Ducks.  From the front porch: ¡ñ Surf Scoters heard as they flush, one Northern Gannet seen.  Four Painted Turtles on the logs in Woods 4.  A Blue Jay is imitating a Red-shouldered Hawk.  Clear, 56-60¢XF., SW 10-15, warm, seems like the first day of spring.  Leave at 11:08 A.M.
 
A Wilson¡¦s Snipe at the routes 481 X 309 small wetland.  Many hundreds of Ring-billed Gulls (but no laughers) following the disking machinery in the fields along Route 481 plus 2 immature Bald Eagles attracted to an unidentified dead mammal.  76 Turkey Vultures on the way home. 
 
During this visit some Forsythia and Crab Apples are blooming, Willows are nice and green.
 
DISMAL SWAMP FIRES REVISITED.  Article in the Washington Post, Monday, March 12, 2012, p. A5, ¡§Efforts underway to restore charred Va. Peat bogs: Refuge managers hope more water will temper future fires, revive white cedar,¡¨ by Matthew A. Ward.  The 2011 fire affected 6,574 acres, burned for 111 days; the 2008 fire burned c. 5,700 acres.  In both instances dense smoke reached Talbot County, the 2008 fire setting off a smoke alarm at Rigby¡¦s Folly, 100+ miles from the fire.  The article does not mention the tremendous destruction to Atlantic White Cedar stands by Hurricane Isabel.
 
BIRDS OF MINNESOTA by Thomas S. Roberts, 2 volumes, 1932 (U. Minnesota Press).  After decades of resistance I broke down and paid $150 to get this fine set, from Buteo Books, one of the last of the old sumptuous state monographs I did not own.  Worth every penny.  90 color plates (by Brooks, Fuertes, Weber, Sutton et al.), 606 text figures, 1512 pages, and ¡K it weighs in at 12.4 pounds.  I like its archaic names, such as Willow Thrush (Veery).  Also has colloquial names, banding results, a massive index and list of references, details on subspecies, and - a sign of its times - the clunky, excruciating key system (pages 457-731) for identifications.  Next on my desiderata list, Dawson¡¦s 4-volume Birds of California and Salomonsen¡¦s Birds of Greenland, both of which will involve considerably more folding green.  
 
NEW SPECIES OF LEOPARD FROG DISCOVERED IN NEW YORK CITY (Staten Island).  George brought this New York Times article to my attention.  How unbelievable is this?
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/nyregion/new-leopard-frog-species-is-discovered-in-nyc.html?_r=2&ref=nyregion
 
Best to all. ¡V Harry Armistead, Philadelphia. 		 	   		  

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