Blackwater & Ferry Neck, November 30 - December 3, 2017.
Harry Armistead
FERRY NECK and BLACKWATER N.W.R., NOVEMBER 30 - DECEMBER 3, 2017.
NOVEMBER 30, THURSDAY. A force 4.1 earthquake c. 6 miles ENE of Dover at 4:45 P.M. Not noticed at Rigby’s Folly, but shook George’s apartment in SW Philadelphia. I like to be at Rigby’s Folly for extreme phenomena and over the years have been on hand for a waterspout, blizzards, hurricanes, extreme drought, extreme wetness, rainbows, satellites passing over, the aurora borealis, rainbows, an eclipse, heat over 100 degrees F., violent thunder and lightning storms, and, in the winter of 1977, frozen Bay to the limit of visibility with pressure ridges 10 feet high at the mouth of Irish Creek. So, I am sorry, a little sorry, not to have noticed an earthquake.
Near routes 404 X 309 12 tundra swans in a pond and 10 more in a field nearby. RIGBY’S FOLLY (includes Lucy Point and Poplar Cove), Ferry Neck, Talbot County, MD: arrive at 3:35 P.M., fair, dead calm, 53 degrees F., 0.3” in the rain gauge since Nov. 26. Hurrah!, the soy bean fields have been harvested; it’s dry enough to drive all over the fields. Out at Lucy Point, 4:15-4:45:
bufflehead 370, common loon 2, horned grebe 1, Canada goose 360 (later 170 in the Big Field), bald eagle 2 adults perched on the osprey nesting platform on the lawn of a neighbor’s house, < 100’ from the house !!, herring gull but 6, belted kingfisher 1, surf scoter 6, long-tailed duck 250.
The little that remains of “Cook’s Point Island” is visible; it isn’t always, depends on tide and visibility; mostly a couple of low marsh tumps. Cook’s Point was an inspiration for novelist John Barth. Also see: 2 Ospreys (the aircraft), and just one boat. Elsewhere on the old place; one gray squirrel.
DECEMBER 1, FRIDAY. Not much. 2 immature bald eagles, 2 gray squirrels. 0 gulls! Out at Lucy Point for 45 minutes mid-day, 7 oyster dredges in sight. 50-54, NW15+ but lowering at day’s end, clear, with the chop on the Choptank making it hard to see much. Cut weeds out there both to improve the view, while there, as well as that across the Big Field from the house. 30 buffleheads in Irish Creek. Drained the hoses, stored rain gauge for the winter. FOX SQUIRREL 1.
DECEMBER 2, SATURDAY. 2 visits to Lucy Point. The 1st in the morning, 9:45-10:30, bufflehead 390, long-tailed duck 70, horned grebe 1, common loon 2 (1 with a fish), bald eagle 2 adults, surf scoter 11, herring gull all of 1, tundra swan 14, Canada goose 1 (!!). Quite a bit of very distant shooting for the lamentable “sea duck” season (a.k.a. target practice). Hazy, high ceiling, calm, 42.
el segundo (what a difference a day, or a few hours, can make, eh?): LONG-TAILED DUCK 1,330, surf scoter 760, bufflehead 400, Canada goose 360, herring gull 8, common loon 3, tundra swan 24. 4:15-4:45, calm, so calm, fair, 46-42. Most of the scoters and longtails are far, far out (far out, man, I mean out-of-sight, far out, can you dig it?). No gannets or goldeneyes seen this visit.
In St. Michaels there are 56 vultures resting on the water tower near the fire company, more probably since I ain’t checkin’ the entire circumference (c. 75% TV, the rest BV), plus 9 more perched adjacent to Graul’s and 3 more airborne. For anyone who has dipped on the buzzards here is a golden opportunity.
Elsewhere at Rigby’s Folly today: gray squirrel 8, FOX SQUIRREL 1, 360 Canada geese in Poplar Cove plus an imm. bald eagle overhead. For the 1st time this year I check around the base of the 100’+ eagle nest tree in our woods, a tall loblolly pine c. 7.5’ in circumference but find no turtle carapaces in contrast to the nest a few years ago in Woods 2 below which were 6 diamondback terrapin shells and 1 spotted turtle remains. There is fresh whitewash and what look like 4 sapling Magnolia grandiflora, that seem very unlikely in such a setting. While walking back from this brief looksee run into new neighbor Frank Burch. The nearly full moon in the evening is almost blinding, closer and bigger-appearing than usual.
DECEMBER 3, SUNDAY. Leave Rigby’s Folly at 6 A.M., 2 eastern cottontails then. A few minutes later 2 deer (does) right in the town of Royal Oak.
BLACKWATER N.W.R., 7 A.M. - noon (official “guided birding tour” 8-11:30). 36-53, overcast with light rain at the start then clearing nicely, calm, tidal water lowish, fresh waters high, right up there. 12 of us on the tour: Liz Armistead, Mary Lee Berger-Hughes, Ed & Karen Cartwright, Mark Cozy, Carol & Jim Duffy (photographers extraordinaire), Marianne & Steve Konka, Mimi Morris, Richard Shanks & me. We hopscotch some with the Talbot Bird Club field trip here. Complete list (some of these seen before or after the official tour, or else elsewhere, such as Cambridge):
Canada goose 5,000 (5,478 the refuge count for Nov. 29), BLUE GOOSE 490 (refuge census recorded 900 on Nov. 29), snow (white form) 250 (refuge total was 400 on Nov. 29), tundra swan 28, northern pintail 1,800 (1,885 the official refuge count on Nov. 29), American black duck 1, mallard 225, northern shoveler 8, green-winged teal 24, hooded merganser 18, red-breasted merganser 6, ruddy duck 24, rock pigeon 6 (Cambridge), mourning dove 4,
Virginia rail 1, dunlin 7, greater yellowlegs 4, laughing gull 0, ring-billed gull 550 (some of these in Cambridge), herring gull 85 (Cambridge), great black-backed gull 4 (Cambridge), Forster’s tern 2, AMERICAN WHITE PELICAN 3, great blue heron 7, turkey vulture 20, bald eagle 22, northern harrier 3, red-tailed hawk 2, belted kingfisher 2, red-bellied woodpecker 1, fish crow 6, Carolina wren 1, eastern bluebird 4, northern mockingbird 2, European starling 225, myrtle warbler 1, Savannah sparrow 4, song sparrow 6, swamp sparrow 1, and red-winged blackbird 70. Nope, no non-avian taxa.
Now back in the 1960s and earlier few white or blue snow geese were seen here. Then the numbers greatly increased and for years there were more blue geese than white snows. Then the blues largely disappeared for a number of years. Now the blues are back again with big numbers seen in the winter of 2016-2017, and now this.
BLACKWATER AREA GOLDEN EAGLES: Excellent summary in Delmarva Ornithologist, Vol. 46, 2017, pages 18-27, “Wintering Golden eagles at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge and surrounding Dorchester County, Maryland, 1986-2017,” by Gregory A. Inskip and Justin Golden with 4 photographs (1 in color) by Golden. From 1- 8 scrutinized each winter, but usually 5-6. I’d add that most are seen N of the refuge. They like areas with a sizable contiguous land mass, are less found of peninsular or marshy areas. GOEA is my nemesis bird. They’re there all the time in the cold months, but I seldom see them anyway.
2 GOOD NEW BOOKS:
“Losing any species diminishes our planet, but few are so inextricably and uniquely linked to this land as the dancing grouse. Watching the Greater Sage-Grouse stomping and popping, as they had done for millennia before, I could feel the urgency of their individual efforts together with that irony peculiar to life: despite the knowledge of own’s own ultimate and bloody mortality, we need to dance like there will always be a tomorrow.” p. 78, Lost among the birds: accidentally finding myself in one very big year by Neil Hayward (Bloomsbury, 2016, 400 pages).
The seabird’s cry: the lives and loves of the planet’s great ocean voyagers by Adam Nicolson (Henry Holt & Co, due out Feb. 2018, 400 pages). Here’s a favorite passage, from p. 294-295:
“If life is safe enough - on an offshore island with no predators, or surrounded by many similar birds that would distract a predator - then flightlessness is an obvious option. Bodies that don’t have to fly can grow larger and swim deeper for longer. They can insulate themselves with fat rather than air, reducing their buoyancy and making diving easier. They can live, in effect. like seals. That is the choice the Great Auk made about 20 million years ago when it diverged from the Razorbills and started on the road to magnificence, enlarging quickly, fattening, triumphing, not as the sad, stupid, vulnerable cul-de-sac of the evolutionary process, but as a masterpiece of beauty and adaptation, as heroic as the Gyrfalcons, regal in its presence across the northern seas.”
Best to all. - Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.