Date: 1/14/25 8:48 am From: Harry Armistead <harryarmistead...> Subject: [MDBirding] Ferry Neck, January 5-11, 2025.
DECEMBER 26, 2024, Anne, Mary et al. see 2 fine red foxes across the road from Fox Harbor Farm, Ferry Neck Road.
Jan. 6-10: strong winds. temperatures in the 20s. 9” of snow Jan. 6.
JANUARY 5, SUNDAY. “ … and winter’s dregs made desolate the weakening eye of day./The tangled bine stems scored the sky/like strings of broken lyres/and all mankind that haunted nigh/had sought their household fires./The land’s sharp features seemed to be the century’s corpse outleant./His crypt the cloudy canopy./The wind his death lament.” … “ - Thomas Hardy, ‘the Darkling Thrush’. from memory, probably a mistake or 2 in my scansion.
Yes, today the grim, mostly overcast, sky foretold of the coming of a great winter storm. Up there a diffuse paleness in the clouds revealed the wan presence of an otherwise invisible sun. A look at the sky and you could feel that something was going to happen.
Route 481, Ruthsburg, 12 tundra swans and big flock of 65 American pipits* (see a digression at the end of this report) in flight plus a bald eagle. A small remnant of earlier snow on the fields here and there (mostly there). no snow geese.
On Sunday gassed up, put car under car port. Did all of our food shopping in Philadelphia on Friday. Turned up heat in the pump house to 70. Ready as can be for the big storm. 175 Canada geese in the field across from Town & Country, 100s in other fields farther west off of Route 33. An eastern bluebird calls next to Carroll’s Market.
Arrive at Rigby’s Folly 3:15, 37, overcast, NW 15-20, a lot of surface water, the innermost cove frozen (c. 1/10 of the cove). All of 8 Canada geese in the cove. As we pull in an adult bald eagle is perched in a black locust right over the yard pump house, and 2 others, a pair in flight, nearby and a red-tailed hawk. While it’s still possible drive across the Big Field to Lucy Point.
JANUARY 6, MONDAY. Heavy snow until noon, 6.8”, 26-33, overcast, NE winds 15-20. More snow at night. A very sedentary day. Feeders disappointing, except good cardinal, chickadee, and white-throated sparrow presence, 2 of the latter with no tails, titmouse only once, a few blue jays, 7 visits by a male red-bellied woodpecker (an unusual one with a lot of reddish wash on the underparts), 1 by a Carolina wren. Zero finches, nuthatches, squirrels, or mourning dove.
Again, all of 8 Canada geese in the cove, c. 1/3 frozen over. The snow impressive and heavy on the magnolia leaves, boxwood, and eastern redcedars. One would hope that the squirrels, the grays in their dreys, noses tucked into their bushy tails, waiting until the weather gets better.
JANUARY 7, TUESDAY. 22-33, crystal clear, NW 25-35 m.p.h. Frequent spindrift of fine snow all day, mostly of surface snow but some from trees. Beautiful, ephemeral, clouds of fine snow particles blown 100 feet or less. Total of 9+” snow yesterday.
John Swaine does a great job plowing the driveway. To my relief the car starts easily. An Arctic day. Liz spots tracks from the feeders area to a tree, definite proof that there has been, indeed, a squirrel in the yard.
Same crew at the feeders today with the addition of a song sparrow and a goldfinch. A few dozen Canada geese in the very shallow cove feeding on, you guessed it, Ruppia maritima (widgeon grass, still retaining the d recently removed from the bird’s English name).
Cove frozen out only to the dock’s end, the high winds keeping it unfrozen most of the rest of the way. Even with its being overcast at night, it is surprising how bright it is, thanks to the snow. Some melting on the edges of the roofs, with consequent dripping icicles.
JANUARY 8, WEDNESDAY. 23-31, NW 15-30, starts clear, gradually becoming overcast but still w/ occasional spots of blue sky. Finally, at least 4 brown-headed nuthatches at the feed. 1st sighting of a gray squirrel at the feed, upside down on a hanging tube feeder.
A very furry adult red fox. Still no deer this visit. Still only c. 1/2 of the cove frozen.
JANUARY 9, THURSDAY. 23-31, clear, NW 14-27 m.p.h. finally the entire cove is frozen, and then some. The 1st 2 red-winged blackbirds at the feed, males. At 11:30 P.M. the moon is 83% full, but: “The moon on the crest of the new-fallen snow/gave the luster of daylight to objects below.” Actually, the snow came Monday, not exactly “new fallen”.
JANUARY 10, FRIDAY. 28, clear, NW 25 (-33). Only the 2nd one seen this time: a gray squirrel high up in the willow oak. From bed see 40 American robins and 30 European starlings feeding voraciously on eastern redcedar cones (that for all the world look like, to me, as if they’re just “berries”). Several times I’ve seen ring-billed gulls do this in the cedars, and not just when there is snow and extreme weather.
Just before we leave for PA (at 11:46) look out the living room window and there is a fox squirrel, at 11:40, no more than 15 feet from us, availing itself of the feed. This is only the 4th yard record and the 1st for at the feed.
2 great blue herons at Easton, over the headwaters of the Tred Avon. When there’s this much ice and snow great blues have been seen to feed on mice and birds. Blackwater NWR has photos of a great blue swallowing a 1/2 gown muskrat. (“I can’t believe I ate the whole thing”; pass the Alka-Seltzer).
Forsake Route 481 for a safer route north. Too bad, the shoulders of 481 would have thronged with sparrows and field birds because of the snow; enables them to get some seeds and grit. 11 deer at Route 301 milepost 104. A bald eagle at M.P. 118. A d.o.r. red fox at the MD/DE border.
Late in the afternoon we circle the Independence Park area several times, only a few blocks from our apartment, where a snowy owl has been seen. Quite a change from its summer tundra habitat. With my usual luck with stakeouts, no luck with this snowy.
JANUARY 11, SATURDAY. Bruce Olszewski and his son Patterson from their tree blind get some quality video of a fox squirrel feeding in Woods 2, as well as its leaping spectacularly from the top of one tree to another.
* BUTCH PEARCE and his inimitable malapropisms. For a number of years Butch enlivened Brian Patteson’s pelagic trips off of the OBX. Usually positioned aft, at the stern, where he would dispense the chum. Lay a chum slick. Sprague’s pipit became spragoo’s pipette. Pomarine jaeger was Pomeranian jagger. Paul Leman was Paul Lemans. Coquina Beach on the OBX was koshinka beach. And I’m betting if he had encountered carabiners they would have become Caribbeans. WHAT a character!
Best to all. - Harry Armistead, Bellevue & Philadelphia.
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