Date: 12/21/25 8:42 am From: Harry Armistead <harryarmistead...> Subject: [MDBirding] Ferry Neck, December 2025.
RIGBY’S FOLLY, Talbot Co., MD: Dec. 4 - 8, 13 - 15, 2025. most of these seen by George.
sending this out is one way for me to say “Merry Christmas”.
DECEMBER 4, Thursday: George sees tundra swan 6, northern harrier 1, golden-crowned kinglet 2, hermit thrush 1, cedar waxwing 28, fox sparrow 1, and pine warbler 1 among other goodies.
DECEMBER 5, Friday. Liz sees a bald eagle from Route 301, milepost 120. An ad. male Cooper’s hawk. 15 deer at Swaine’s. George sees a red fox.
DECEMBER 6, Saturday. Here today are Liz & me, Kristin & George, Mary with Lucas and David, and Anne with Alexis. Noon at Bellevue: find 12 ring-billed gulls, 1 herring gull, 8 buffleheads, 400 Canada geese, a common loon dealing with a hogchoker, 1 deer, and 4 gray squirrels. I hear a pileated woodpecker adjacent to the Ferry Neck Chapel. Along our driveway a fox squirrel scolds me continuously; I have invaded its domain.
34 degrees F. at start, overcast but some sun at noon, nearly calm. A few birds today: an ad. red-tailed hawk over Field 2. 4 tundra swans, 1 horned grebe, a gray squirrel, 1 common loon.
DECEMBER 7, known to all as Sunday, to some as Pearl Harbor Day also. fair, calm or SW5. low 40s. The big wet area on the south side of Field 1 is frozen, doesn’t get any sun there.
from the dock 10:45 - 12:45: bald eagle 3, turkey vulture 17, black vulture 5, red-tailed hawk 1, Cooper’s hawk 1, Canada goose 570 (plus 75 more in the distance), mallard 13, ring-billed gull 2, kingfisher 1, great blue heron 1, ruddy duck 105, rock dove 5 (seldom seen here). 2 gray squirrels today. Our guests leave c. noon.
DECEMBER 8, Monday. 35, NW 15-20, mostly overcast. On the way back to PA 3 American kestrels, 2 red-tailed hawks, 2 bald eagles, mostly along Route 481.
DECEMBER 13, Saturday: ROUTE 309: groups of 60 & 370 tundra swans + 2 ad. bald eagles. d.o.r. at Royal Oak an eastern cotton-tailed bunny wabbit. Arrive at RF c. 3 P.M., Oh, “just sittin’ on a dock by the Bay”, for an hour or so at day’s end: Canada goose 1,020, great blue heron 1, bufflehead 65, ruddy duck 90, ring-billed gull 7, bald eagle 1. overcast, calm, 43 degrees F., but a spectacular, brief, sunset, bright scarlet (photographed by George). George finds a gray catbird.
DECEMBER 14. PROPERTY LIST, Sun., 42 species, a segment of the Ferry Neck/Deep Neck sector, in turn that is part of the St. Michaels Christmas Bird Count. George, Liz, and me. 1-2” fresh snow ending c. 8 A.M., then overcast, winds NW 15-20, temps in the 30s. The snow dappled the loblolly pines and the branches of the deciduous trees, all the way to their tops, very lovely. The wind made detecting waterfowl difficult. 3 gray squirrels, all of them fussy.
Canada goose 1,150 (probably some duplication), scoter, either black or surf 22, Bufflehead 111, ruddy duck 60, long-tailed duck 4, Cooper’s hawk 1, northern harrier 2, bald eagle 4, ring-billed gull 7, herring gull 3, gull unIDd 4, eastern screech-owl 1,
blue jay 13, American crow 4, Carolina chickadee 10, tufted titmouse 4, brown-headed nuthatch 4, Carolina wren 1 (?!; apparently that was it, sports fans), ruby-crowned kinglet 3, golden-crowned kinglet 6, brown thrasher 1, northern mockingbird 3,
European starling 65, hermit thrush 9, American robin 215, cedar waxwing 110, Amercian pipit 25, slate-colored junco 45, white-throated sparrow 121, song sparrow 11, fox sparrow 1, myrtle warbler 5, American goldfinch 1, red-winged blackbird 5, brown-headed cowbird 51, common grackle 56, northern cardinal 14.
We didn’t do much in the afternoon. But perhaps we should have. But Peterson expressed this very well: “New birds come very slowly on a winter afternoon.” (Peterson, 1948, p. 41)
The convivial compilation is again held at the Methodist church in Royal Oak. I like to think Christmas Bird Counts comprise 3 equally important components: recreation, science, and socializing. ** [go to last page]
I’ve participated in c. 325 Christmas Bird Counts. Usually 6 (sometimes even 7) a year for decades. The current falloff due to what I refer to as my “recessional and diminuendo”. Today, as in the past few years, St. Michaels is my only CBC. My first one here, 70 years ago, before I could drive, was with Gladys and Dick Cole. Dick was then head of the Bird Banding Laboratory. Gladys would later help mentor me when I first began bird banding.
DECEMBER 15, MONDAY. c. 4/5 of cove froze last night last night. 27, NW 15+, fair. George is out 79 mins. this morning and of most interest in his list of 23 species: cackling goose 1, sharp-shinned hawk 1, bald eagle 3, golden-crowned kinglet 3, brown-headed nuthatch 2, eastern bluebird 5, hermit thrush 3, waxwing 55, and white-throated sparrow 75 plus a fox squirrel in the yard next to the tire swing.
Visits today of Reliable Pest Control, C. Albert Matthew$, and those associated with our entry into the Conservation Reserve Program, the latter takes impressive drone photographs of the fields they will be involved with once the program gets going. eastern towhee 1, northern harrier 1 (ad. male).
A fox squirrel with some dark markings near the Ferry Neck Chapel. On the way back to Philadelphia we see 5 groups of horned larks totaling c. 125, concentrated near the shoulders of Route 481 by the snows of Sunday morning. From Route 309 just north of Route 404 in a field are a few 100 Canada Geese being joined by a couple of hundred snow geese (including a few blues) dropping in from above. Later a red fox off in a snowy field to the east of Route 301.
HOME IMPROVEMENTS in the offing include having George’s U. of MD friend Rob Berg build an outdoor shower. Also, make the little downstairs room adjacent to the kitchen into a fully operational bedroom. Rob will also install a rail on the high, brick area on the backside of the house, a spot that gives me the willies whenever I climb or descend from it. In all cases these are good ideas anyway, but we’re also doing this with an eye to the increasing challenges of aging.
Rob has already installed railings on the dock, back porch steps, and in 2 areas of the front porch. Inside Scott Cronshaw has installed grab rails, 3+” diameter dowels, along the steps of the 2 stairs, a Godsend.
CANADA GEESE AND POPLAR COVE. That’s the cove seen from our house. For 4 straight winters big numbers of Canada geese have foraged here, tipping up to reach widgeon grass (Ruppia maritima). One wonders there is any grass left, but for 4 summers it has grown back. Sometimes more than a thousand geese at a time feed on this SAV. Perhaps they help spread the seeds. Sometimes a few tundra swans join them.
OUR FIELDS were recently harvested: sorghum. But the stubble still remains, knee-high.
BLACKWATER NWR recent counts of interest: These have been bruited about elsewhere, but my notes reach some who may not have yet received this news. On Dec. 16 as part of Ron Ketter’s regular waterfowl surveys: 100 bald eagles were seen simultaneously from the Route 335 Bridge, a grand total of 139 for the day, plus 128 American white pelicans. These counts are not unprecedented, but they still blow my mind. When there is a lot of ice, frozen Blackwater River, etc., it seems to bring the eagles out. Then they’re often seen sitting on the ice.
Best regards to all. - Harry Armistead, Bellevue and Philadelphia.
** …But even though there are many nuggets that ornithologists can mine from this rich lode of bird information [Christmas Bird Count results], to me and my friends it is our way of celebrating the holidays, an ornithological ritual that has come to represent Yuletide more than Santa Claus or the Christmas tree.” !!!
from Birds Over America, the chapter “Census at Christmas”, by Roger Tory Peterson (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1948, p. 47)
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