Hooper's I., Blackwater, Ferry Neck, Jan. 11-17, 2023, mute swan notes, food.
Harry Armistead
HOOPER’S ISLAND, BLACKWATER N.W.R. & FERRY NECK, JANUARY 11-17, 2023. notes on food. mute swan musings.
JANUARY 11, WEDNESDAY. ROUTE 481: 195 tundra swans in the “swan fields” south of Ruthsburg, 2 American kestrels nearby. At BELLEVUE a gray squirrel, 3 ring-billed gulls, and 2 buffleheads; yes, that’s ALL. 100s of Canada geese in 2 fields adjacent to and south of Bellevue Road X Ferry Neck Road.
At RIGBY’S FOLLY 17 tundra swans, 140 Canada geese, 60 buffleheads, 55 surf scoters, a red-tailed hawk. Fields 3, 4 & 5 have not been mowed, the others are nice and open, and drivable. Arrive at 1:46, overcast, calm, 45-43, has dried out some.
I’m in good hands. A delicious dinner of mussels, breaded flounder wedges with tartar sauce, egg noodles garnished with butter and parsley, homemade vegetable soup, and tossed salad with avocados, cherry tomatoes, and escarole lettuce.
JANUARY 12, THURSDAY. mostly overcast, light rain, 47-54, calm then SE 5-10. slate-colored junco 6, American robin 7, these along the driveway. 4 gray squirrels. From the dock: 160 canvasbacks (finally; none found on the Christmas count which had 46 observers), 310 Canada geese, 80 buffleheads, 1 ring-billed gull, 2 surf scoters, these at c. 1 P.M.
From Lucy Point, 1:50 P.M., a male long-tailed duck, 1 horned grebe, 55 surf scoters, 31 tundra swans, 65 buffleheads, 1 American crow. In Field 2 six turkey vultures, eating dirt or spent shotgun pellets?
JANUARY 13, FRIDAY. With apologies to Chuck Berry: … “drivin’ slow… ridin’ along in my automobile, my baby beside me at the wheel … so we parked way out on the Kokomo.” You hear what you want to hear, I swear this always sounded like Pocomoke. Today’s outing essentially just a slow drive, the best kind.
EGYPT ROAD: 1 bald eagle, 6 hooded mergansers at the “prothonotary place” (that may no longer be such as it has become SO open). BLACKWATER N.W.R., just a quick drive through. Pool 1 & 3B, loaded, an hour spent at either one would be worthwhile.
tundra swan 600, greater yellowlegs 6, bald eagle 5, ring-billed gull 525, northern harrier 2 (close range), and, sloppy, quick estimates: northern shoveler 125, mallard 500, northern pintail 400.
HOOPER’S ISLAND, delicious lunch at Old Salty’s, esp. jumbo lump imperial, the onion rings, stewed tomatoes, oysters topped with crab imperial, and cream of crab soup, the baked pineapple not up to its usual standards. While dining at my favorite table with my trusty 10X see a resting flock of 140 redheads, 18 buffleheads, and, over at Barren Island 40 tundra swans and 2 bald eagles. clear becoming mostly overcast, NW 15-20, 48-52.
Farther down, at Hooper’s Island per se see 45 dunlin on the experimental jetties, 3 bald eagles, 4 great blue herons, brown-headed cowbird 55, 8 surf scoters, 425 European starlings, 18 buffleheads, great black-backed gull 65 (all of them adults), and, at real close range, 7 black scoters, 6 of them adult males, the bright orange, bill protuberance, knob or whatever you want to call it, seen at excellent advantage (“sea prothonotary”).
But it is bleak down there today, no loons, no grebes, no goldeneyes, no long-tailed ducks. BLEAK.
JANUARY 14, SATURDAY. overcast, 34-38, NW 20. 250 Canada geese in the cove. 2 does at Frog Hollow. 2 gray squirrels late in the day, 5:14 P.M. at Lucy Point. At BELLEVUE, at 5 P.M.: surf scoter 4, ring-billed gull 9. Raccoons have started to dislodge the hanging bird feeders, 2 feeders today. Anne, Derek, and Alexis arrive. mourning dove 2, white-throated sparrow 5.
JANUARY 15, SUNDAY. clear, NW20, 34 - 39 - 41 - 39, ice in low areas. Canada goose 310 in the cove. gray squirrel 4. Derek fixes the speed limit sign. BELLEVUE.11:45, bufflehead 12, canvasback 65, slate-colored junco 12.
Lucy Point: 5:06 - 5:53, a gray squirrel descends a black locust close and right in front of the car at the late time of 5:30 (sunset was at 5:06), evening flight of redheads, 215, in 11 flocks, headed north, bufflehead 14, Canada goose 6.
Most evenings we just sit around, each absorbed in our respective readings, punctuated by my occasional grunts and less frequent belches. But this evening, over a nice fire laid on by Derek, we lapse into mild discussions of Verlaine, Mallarme, Rimbaud (but not Rambo), Baudelaire, and Edgar Allan Poe’s disastrous time at West Point, plus Ernest Dowson (of days of wine and roses fame), most of this fueled by a recent visit to the Philadelphia Art Museum by Liz and Derek to see the Matisse exhibit. Derek fills in some of this by pulling up nuggets from his mobile phone. It is a veritable salon.
JANUARY 16, MONDAY. 8 gray squirrels at the feed simultaneously, a record, plus one on the driveway and a fox squirrel on the south side of Field 1. Hunters just north of Edwards Point cut loose at a flock of 8 Canada geese, at least 3 times the distance of shotgun range, what is called “skybustin’”. Blue jays go to work on a corncob. Six American wigeon in the cove (3 pairs), seldom seen here anymore. 9 surf scoters from Lucy Point in mid-day.
clear, 34- , NW 10. Anne, Alexis, and Derek leave for Philadelphia. Five eastern bluebirds in Field 1, a northern flicker in Field 6. raptors: red-shouldered hawk 1, Cooper’s hawk 1, bald eagle 2, black vulture 1.
Lucy Point 4:45 - 5:45, Canada goose 1,300, redhead 95 (the evening flight again, to the north), tundra swan 20, bufflehead 6, and surf scoter 3, plus, on leaving, an eastern cottontail, the species hardly in evidence at all this year. 47, NW 5, mostly overcast.
This is all very well, but the Choptank River mouth continues to be a desert. cf. totals for January 23, 1983: common goldeneye 600, bufflehead 2,000, long-tailed duck 4,000 … I rest my case.
JANUARY 17, TUESDAY. 20 buffleheads in the cove. Leave at 10:20, overcast, light rain, 36 if I remember correctly, calm. Our by now traditional get away breakfast at Denny’s. Rest assured the pancakes, bacon, sausages, and scrambled eggs are good, but the real piece de resistance resides with their hash browns, the best in the planet. The witticisms on the coffee mugs are a nice touch. Perhaps they’ve been retired, but I don’t see the delivery robots this time. Usually I like to sit in a booth on the south side, that overlooks what used to be my favorite ditch. But the ditch vegetation has been brutally cut back.
South of RUTHSBURG, Route 481, 60 tundra swans off to the east, and a mile or so further on to the north a group of c. 800 snow geese and 20 tundra swans, also on the east side. At mile post 121, ROUTE 301, an adult bald eagle perched on top of a pole.
MUTE SWAN MEMORIES. Tyler Bell’s recent message recounted how the mute swan exterminators would find reports of MUSWs on MDOSPREY and then go “remove” the birds. They’re just about completely gone from Chesapeake Bay now, an extraordinary project nearly as amazing as the eradication of the nutria.
I’d make my reports mentioning mute swans on occasion, often in their last days at some Godforsaken spot in the fastnesses of the Bloodsworth Island archipelago. If I wasn’t exact enough Larry Hindman would message me asking for more precise locations.
I jocularly asked him to just leave a few so that the species counts in Dorchester County would be maximized. There was resistance from some to this eradication program. I remember getting a message from someone named Handel (last name forgotten) who maintained that Tundra Swans in comparison to MUSWs were ugly.
Back in the li’l old day once from Swan Harbor north of Hooper’s Island I saw a flock of 700 MUSWs. For a stretch of several years we’d boat to nearby Barren Island (now a unit of Blackwater N.W.R.) over Memorial Day Weekend and find 5-6 MUSW nests every time.
I took one egg back home and kept it in the living room in a small basket along with an ostrich and an emu egg. Years later it exploded, as loud as a gunshot, at 3 in the morning. We were startled. Fortunately it had all dried out.
I believe the preferred firearm for use on the MUSWs was a .22 silencer, one of the favorite weapons of the Mob.
Here at Rigby’s Folly my high count of MUSWs was 240 on July 29, 2000, as well as the next day. I saw the 1st here, 10, on June 21, 1971. Five nests were found here plus adults with small young seen most years in the late 1980s. The little cygnets ARE cute.
An outstanding article on MUSWs is by Jan Reese. “Demography of European Mute Swans in Chesapeake Bay”, in the Auk, 1980, vol. 97, no. 3, pages 449-464. He refers so accurately to their “unrestricted growth”. The level of detail in this article is extraordinary as was the extensive field work to make it possible.
There are still plenty of MUSWs on Long Island with recent Christmas counts (CBCs) turning up 321 in Central Suffolk County as well as 234 at Smithtown, plus 78 at New Haven, CT, etc. Ontario still has many hundreds. You can see dozens at Cape May. Here the St. Michaels CBC on Dec. 18 with 46 participants didn’t find any.
One sometimes wishes THEY WERE mute, one of their commonest vocalizations, if you can call it that, sounds, I am sorry to have to say, quite flatulent. No way they’ll win the Pavarotti contest.
When they take off on the water their feet make clop clop clop sounds until they are, finally, launched. Their wings make a wop wop wop sound audible at some distance.
Perhaps they are over-vilified. Maybe they help spread the seeds of SAV via their droppings. Ave atque vale mute swan.
Best to all. - Harry Armistead, Bellevue & Philadelphia.
Gail Mackiernan
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Kurt Schwarz
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mdbirding/4BF4BACF-6217-4838-BDCD-F0ECE0A4E98E%40comcast.net.
Ellicott City, Howard County
kurtschwarz4 at gmail dot com
