Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 11:32:54 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Rick Sussman Subject: sightings fro the Delaware bayshore/Bombay Hook area Comments: cc: voice@capaccess.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, Nancy and I spent most of Saturday, May 26 and Sunday May 27 birding along the Delaware bayshore and the Bombay Hook area. Higlights are as follows: Heavy rains all day Saturday put a damper (pun intended) on our birding on Saturday, so we drove around between Dover and Milford searching out places that we've never visited. Most were not productive (Milford neck/Big Stone Beach, Bower's Beach, and Fowler Beach), so we finally headed to Slaughter Beach and Mispillion Light where, though still heavily raining, we found the beaches alive with both horseshoe crabs laying their eggs, and thousands of shorebirds and gulls feasting on the provender. The majority were Semipalmated Sandpipers, Ruddy Turnstones, and Red Knots, along with good numbers of Laughing Gulls, Short-billed Dowitchers, and Dunlin. Along the road to the lighthouse we saw the only species which we did not also find on Sunday, as a very wet and dishevelled Clapper rail crossed the road in front of us and then stood in the vegetation alongside the van, preening for at least 20 minutes. We snapped a few shots through the scope. On Sunday we met another couple at Bombay Hook early, and started around the loop, in 2 vehicles. We passed the parking lot for the Raymond Pool observation tower, choosing instead the boardwalk trail. As we exited the cars we were asked by another birder if we'd seen the Curlew Sandpiper, back at Raymond pool. NO! Holy COW! So we jumped back in the vehicles and backed up along the road and parked in the gravel lot at the ob. tower. We hurriedly assembled our scopes and headed up the trail, passing a group of birders off the trail in the wet areas to the left. We chose instead to go up the tower, where we got no good views of the bird, so headed back to the spot where the others were already assembled and viewing the bird. It was an area (not on the main trail) very wet underfoot, but the bird (determined by one local women to be an adult female CURLEW SANDPIPER, based on its plumage coloration) was feeding not far off at the left-most end of Raynmond Pool (not visible from the main loop road, only from near the observation tower). There were 3 other birders present when we were there; the only one I recognized was local guru Frank Rohrbacher, who actually discovered this bird earlier in the day on Saturday. It was a really nice speciman in breeding plumage, feeding actively at close range, the whole time we watched it. It was the highlight of the trip. The rest of the "hook" was really rather average, water levels being very high, shorebird numbers being very low. Very few Glossy Ibis present, but good numbers of Black Skimmers on the tidal side of the marshes. Good numbers of the regulars; most egrets/herons seen in good numbers (but only one each of both Night-herons). More N. Flickers than I remember seeing here, and good numbers of Marsh Wrens nest-building, singing, etc. Very few warblers present, with only one female Black-throated Blue found. The entrance road held good numbers of Black-bellied Plovers, feeding in the rain pools, along with very few Semi-palmated Plovers and a few Horned Larks. After lunch at the picnic tables, we headed down to Slaughter beach where numbers were much lower than Saturday for all species; same for Mispillion Light. This could've been because of the tides and high winds, however. Port Mahon Rd. was also rather slow and windy. We did not find anything at the DAFB other than meadowlarks and bobwhite. We managed to tally 85 species; not bad considering the horrendous weather on Saturday, and the high winds on Sunday. We managed to miss Killdeer, A. Kestrel, most songbirds, but the horseshoe-crab egg feeding frenzy, at least on Saturday , was certainly worth the trip! Maybe the Curlew Sandpiper will hang out for the whole weekend... Rick Sussman Ashton,MD warblerick@aol.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================