Ferry Neck, July 20-24, 2025. menhaden.

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Harry Armistead

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Jul 26, 2025, 1:05:46 PMJul 26

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FERRY NECK, JULY 20-24, 2025.

JULY 18-20, a Rigby’s Folly, George, 3 of his friends and their families (total of 15 + 3 dogs!). George photographs 6 big spicebush butterfly caterpillars on our parsley pot, a big but tailless female skink. George sees 2 red-headed woodpeckers. Some of the guests go swimming at night with consequent bioluminescence (from dinoflagellates?).

JULY 20, SUNDAY. 7 cattle egrets at John Swaine’s. Fields inundated with c 3” of rain the past few days. The SE side of the Big Field especially wet. Arrive at 4:15, fair, SW 10-, 87 degrees F.

JULY 21, MONDAY. 72-87, SW 10, fair. Bob Ake and Joyce Neff visit and have lunch with us on their way back from West Chester to Norfolk. Bob see a ruby-throated hummingbird in the back yard plus the aforementioned cattle egrets and a red fox on the way in. Liz sees the adult red-headed woodpecker in the front yard. A pileated woodpecker calls right in the yard. 3 gray squirrels at the feed. A red-spotted purple. A northern flicker foraging for ants at the base of the willow oak. I see a 3” skink, brilliant blue tail, on the SW crawlspace vent. See only 1 firefly this evening. Liz sees 4 skinks, incl. a big female sans tail.

JULY 22, TUESDAY. 71-85, humidity good, fair or clear, mostly NW 5-10, a beauty. 3 glossy ibis vigorously probing in the big wet area on the south side of the Big Field, the 1st time I’ve seen “sicklebills” actually on the property, the other 30-40 records have all been flyovers.. Liz finds 2 pileated and a red-headed woodpecker right in the yard. I am mostly at the computer today. Few blooms remain on the rose of Sharon bushes. Several fireflies this evening. A loud ring-billed gull on top of the boat lift. A goldfinch couple at the feed. Chesapeake Land Management does a good job mowing the road/trail across the Big Field early today; I’d only requested this late last night.

JULY 23, WEDNESDAY. 72-85, fair/clear, winds variously NE, SW. In yard a pileated and an ad. red-headed woodpecker. 2 gray squirrels at the feed. Listen to Mose Allison and Paul Robeson (‘old man river’). tiger swallowtail, red-spotted purple, hackberry emperor. Lots of cicada racket. A green heron gives me what for for disturbing its domain. They do not hold back.

Getting to be a tradition: the evening drive to Bellevue. In the order seen (or heard): a doe in Field 4, a male common whitetail (a dragonfly) as usual on the driveway, a calling Cope’s gray tree frog, a male indigo bunting at driveway X Field 4, a pileated woodpecker in Woods 2, with the dampness quite a few toadstools developing in the various woodlands, a small buck near B, a gray squirrel at B with a reddish-brown tail, a red fox on the driveway X Field 2.

JULY 24, THURSDAY. 3 squirrels at the feed. Leave at 10:26. clear, 76 SW 8-10, a beauty. A cattle egret with the 4 ponies at Royal Oak.

FISHTALK (Rudow’s Fishtalk Chesapeake and mid-Atlantic), June 2025, p. 10. This and other “hooks and bullets” freebies are worth a gander. This issue has a full-page article, “Back to the bunker” by Lenny Rudow on the decline of menhaden, laying the blame where I think it belongs, on Omega Protein of Reedville, VA. Menhaden are the main food item for brown pelicans and ospreys. At present Bay ospreys have in recent years had terrible reproductive success, young starving, because the parents are not able to furnish them with enough food. In years of staying at Kiptopeke, VA, I’ve often seen the Omega Protein fleet of what seem to be destroyer-sized ships, aided by 3 or 4, perhaps more, Piper Cub type aircraft sighting and netting the (for the moment at least) huge menhaden surface-active schools. The state of Virginia seems largely lacking in environmental-friendly legislation. Gives Omega Protein a free hand. There’s a book about menhaden, The most important fish in the sea: menhaden and America by H. Bruce Franklin (Shearwater, 2008, 280p.).