Ferry Neck, June 26 - July 2, 2024.

[Harry Armistead]

FERRY NECK, JUNE 26 - JULY 2, 2024.  Lots of Queen Anne’s Lace everywhere.  A few cicadas, fireflies. 

In memory of Orlando Garrido, 1931-2024.  It was great that he accompanied us for half of our tour of Cuba.  The bus would stop and he would get out to point out something.  It was hard to keep up with him, then in his eighties.  He and his brothers were finalists in the Canadian Open (tennis).  He played at Wimbledon 6 times.  When he was with us, during that stage of his life, he would often swim offshore half a mile and back most days.  He pointed out a big lizard to us, one he had first described to science.  I remember him showing us the nest of a Cuban Black Hawk; they fed heavily on land crabs (the crabs gave me the creeps).  Look up to the ceiling of an outdoor cafe and there would be crabs clustered in the corners.  Orlando took a fancy to my florid evening shirt, full of trogons.  I was going to send him one and never got around to it.  No one would have deserved more my giving “the shirt off my back”.  He was the author of hundreds of articles as well as the ranking Cuban bird guide.  He named dozens of animals new to science, especially anoles.

For a fascinating tribute Google his name and hit on a tribute on his 90th birthday, that in my tech ineptitude, I can’t figure out how to cut and paste here.

JUNE 26, WEDNESDAY.  Now when you head out Route 33 headed to St. Michaels when you get to Oak Creek then BAM, there is the great expanse of Miles River.  What a great welcome to the Eastern Shore.  What a view!  At low or lowish tide there is an impressive amount of SAV there this year, lots of underwater grasses, with, today, a big flock of Canada Geese availing themselves of it.

Arrive 5:15, 93 degrees F., mostly overcast, SW 10-20, some rain forecast but just a few pathetic drops.  It is VERY dry now.  Box Turtle 1, goes back and forth across the head of the driveway several times, sometimes stopping and craning its head and neck, having a good looksee.  Gray Squirrel 1.  Indigo Bunting 1, Great Blue Heron 1, Turkey Vulture 8, Osprey 2 (no sign of eggs or young in spite of the female being in an incubating posture the entire time of our previous visit), Barn Swallow 8, Purple Martin 2, Fish Crow 1 Eastern Bluebird 1.  no terrapin.

Corpus delecti 1.  Ribs, bones, and strange very dark fur, perhaps 2 feet long out past the tire swing..  I’ll look at it tomorrow, but, the trouble is, it disappears overnight, perhaps by a fox or coon.

JUNE 27, THURSDAY.  clear, 70s - 86, NW 5-10, then SW light and calm.  Great Egret 1.  Ruby-throated Hummingbird 1.  Yellow-billed Cuckoo 1.  Indigo Bunting sings right in the yard.  Green Heron 1.  Red-bellied Woodpecker 1.  Chipping Sparrow 1.  33 schools of minnows at one time based on their surface water disturbances and 1 one foot fish jumps at the head of the cove.  1 bluet.

Eastern Cottontail 1.  Gray Squirrel 2.  Box Turtle 2 (differs from yesterday’s; they often appear right after a rain).  A small, 5” skink, highly-marked female with nice striping, on the front porch.  Haven’t seen a terrapin in days.  I guess I just don’t understand their spatiotemporal ways.    3 Wild Turkeys.  1 Pearl Crescent.  0.85” of rain last night but no puddles and the Varmint Pool and Waterthrush Pond still dry.   

JUNE 28, FRIDAY.  clear, NW15, then ESE 15-20, low 70s - 83, low humidity.  From the front porch Liz sees 2 hummingbirds attracted to the Coral Bells, a Carolina Wren building a nest in the boxwood, 2 deer, and a Fowler’s Toad, a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. 

Out by the cove: a Snowy Egret, 3 Cattle Egrets, a Great Blue Heron, 2 Bald Eagles.  By the back porch the first blossoms of the Rose of Sharon Bushes.  Big dead limb from the Tulip Tree fallen last night.  I put out 2 red Wawa bags in hopes to attract more hummers.  No terrapin.  Corpus delecti 2.  Dead, smallish deer in the interdal zone across the cove.  This, too, disappears.  

JUNE 29, SATURDAY.  Mostly fair, SSE 15-20, low 70s - 87.  Nancy Lytell and Ann Starr throw a party for Ferry Neck folks, 3-6.

Great Crested Flycatcher 1, Blue Grosbeak 1, Yellow-billed Cuckoo 1, Chipping Sparrow 1, pretty much the same old gang.  Steady batch of Tree Swallows over Field 1 with a Barn Swallow or two.  

eastern cottontailed bunny wabbit 1, squirreleepooh 1, Reynard 1, 1 hop toad, a little baby fawnlet 1 (real young/small).  Red-Spotted Purple 1.  6 deer (does) in Field 1 and a single doe later with her half-grown fawn.  That’s about it for today Sports Fans, no doubleheads, haners, or turkles.  If we had been in the woods say 40 minutes after sunset we might have heard the “hollerin boys”.  

Old Charlie used to say “Be good or the hollerin’ boys will get yuh.”  I can’t say for sure, but I think he might have thought Chuck-will’s-widows were the hollerin’ boys.  Charlie resides in the small graveyard near the A-frame house.  I need to go there to get, from his headstone, his dates and middle initial (M?).  The little blue foot stool he made, in our living room here, is a work of art.

Two Brer Rabbit Stories from the Eastern Shore of Maryland

S. G. Armistead

The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 84, No. 334 (Oct. - Dec., 1971), pp. 442-444 (3 pages).

 

In Tranquility, where my grandparents (Sophie [Ashton] Tucker, Henry Tucker, M.D.) used to live, Brother Gordon (Gordy) recorded these stories when he was an advanced teen, late 1940s, from Charles Cook, published them many years later.  Old Charlie could not read or write so Gordy knew he’d learned them from oral tradition.    

JUNE 30, SUNDAY.  overcast, humid, “close”, 70s to mid-80s, 90 in fact, SE5.  Rain, 8:02 to 9 P.M., slightly better than no rain at all.  Pileated Woodpecker 1, Orchard Oriole 1, Pine Warbler 1, Black Vulture 3.  Carolina Wren nesting out front is deafening.  When close I have to turn down my hearing aids 4 clicks.  As the sergeants used to say in my Army years, “sound off like you got a pair.”  2 rabbits, 1 squirrel, 1 Cope’s Gray Treefrog.  Great Crested Flycatcher, Blue Grosbeak, Pine Warbler, 2 Mallards, Yellow-billed Cuckoo.  That Orchard Oriole my 1st here this year, hard to believe.   

JULY 1, MONDAY.  Happy Fiscal New Year.  high 60s to c. 80, NW 15-25 m.p.h., clear, low humidity.  Carolina Wren nest with 2 young in the folded Kamp Rite chair on the front porch.  Very dry, the light rain last night didn’t help.  Blue Grosbeak.  Chipping Sparrow 2.  Gray Squirrel 1.  2  Bank Swallows.  Spend most of the day doing paperwork and chores.

Half-grown Eastern Cottontail.  Winds gradually diminishing.  Yes, gradually.  Tide out to the end of the dock.  Mud on cove bottom curiously pockmarked.  Green Heron 1.  Great Blue Heron 1.  Osprey with tiny fish, about all I’ve seen them with this summer.

JULY 2, TUESDAY.  clear, 77, E 15, cool, low humidity.  1 gray squirrel.  leave 10 A.M.  So glad Easton Diner is open again, after the fire there.  

Best to all. - Harry Armistead, Bellevue & Philadelphia.