"Rigby's Folly", Armistead property on Ferry Neck, Talbot County, MD, near
Bellevue.  November 5-6, 2005, Liz Armistead, Bob Lukens & myself.  Much of
the weekend was spent doing outdoor chores, primarily "landscaping", or
else lollygagging around on the dock and elsewhere, but there were still
some birds to be seen.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5.  Clear, warm & hazy, winds light and variable or calm
all day, temps 58-65 degrees. F.  No hawk flight today.  Still plenty of
SAV on the cove bottom.  

20 Common Loons.  91 Mute Swans.  12 Double-crested Cormorants.  1,070
Canada Geese (these a single group in our cove; a few hundred others in
flight elsewhere).  115 Surf Scoters.  1 Long-tailed Duck.  15 Buffleheads.
 12 Black Vultures (2nd highest property count).  2 Bald Eagles.  10
Forster's Terns.  10 bluebirds.  325 Laughing Gulls.  1 phoebe.  1 male
kingfisher.  

2.5 hour boat trip to Oxford and back, c. 14 miles, to top off "the
Mudhen." She took 5.1 gallons.  Fished for an hour or so.  No luck.  No
feeding gulls or terns.  No sign of surface-active fishes.  A dead Choptank
River mouth.  Water temps in high 50s.  For some reason, perhaps due to the
calm waters and/or ideal weight distribution, the boat went faster than
ever, several times up to 31 miles per hour, at 5,300 r.p.m.  

Caught a c. 1' young Black Rat Snake.  It was sunning on the lawn. 
Beautiful markings in the young before they get to be black.  Butterflies: 
3 Orange Sulphurs, 1 Cabbage White, 1 Monarch & 1 Buckeye.  1 Gray
Squirrel.  1 deer.  

Very low tide in A.M.  Chainsawed and removed a large dead Black Locust
that had been lying on the lawn for years.  Cleaned off car port roof (nice
angle, footing quite safe) and trimmed a Red Mulberry hanging over it. 
Improved the distant "clerestory" area and enlarged it by c. one third,
through which we see the Choptank River mouth from c. 900 feet from the
lawn and across Field 1.  Cut down and cut up a small dead Black Walnut on
the lawn.  

Bob spotted a late Sea Nettle from the dock.  Liz made oyster stew.  Nice
cookout after dark (steaks, which I overcooked somewhat, and hot dogs)
while the crescent moon, arcing towards nearby Venus, was setting.  Later
Orion rose in the east and the Milky Way was easy to see.        

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6.  Fair, temps 57-72, winds variously S-SW-SE 15-20+
m.p.h. and strengthening all day long, warm, breezy, tide sequence
high-low-high, waters considerably higher today.  A more interesting day
with birds moving.

RAPTORS:  20 Turkey & 4 Black vultures.  1 harrier.  14 Sharp-shinned, 4
Cooper's & 4 Red-tailed Hawks (all adults).  4 Bald Eagles (1 ad. & 3
immies).  1 of the Cooper's Hawks flew across the cove and was divebombed
by a Forster's Tern several times.  I've never seen THAT before, have you? 
Most of the raptors were flying south into the wind.

Also:  6 Common Loons.  1 GREEN HERON (well-seen by Liz; previous late date
for here was October 14 one year).  2 Ruddy Ducks, buzzin' by.  1 male Surf
Scoter in the cove, spent much of the time way up at the head of the cove,
very unusual, ergo I suspect it was a wounded casualty of the, for want of
a better word, assinine "sea duck" season, otherwise known, at least in my
household, as target practice.  21 Tree Swallows.  5 Field Sparrows.  375
Laughing Gulls (filled the skies most of the day, presumably hawking
high-flying insects, although you never seem to see one actually catch
anything).  1 Killdeer.  1 Pileated Woodpecker.  

MUTE SWAN ACTION.  1 of today's Mute Swans had a neck collar with the
alphanumeric of CA82.  Another had a plain white collar but with some
apparent wiring and with some sort of device on the dorsal side, perhaps a
radio, as there seemed to be a short antennae also.  Whenever it tipped up
this rig would slide all the way down to the head.  A pair was seen
copulating, perhaps inspired by the Indian Summer weather, the male with
its neck feathers all puffed up, pompous and overbearing, mounting the
female's back, and holding her down in the water, almost submerged, while
he pinched her neck.  A rather ugly spectacle from my anthropomorphic
perspective.      

Went swimming in the cove.  For the first time assembled a grease gun and 
attempted, perhaps successfully, to grease the boat straplift.

BUTTERFLIES:  25 Orange Sulphurs.  4 Cloudless Sulphurs.  2 Clouded
Sulphurs.  1 Monarch.  2 Pearl Crescents.  1 American Lady.  

1 Spring Peeper called half-heartedly on the east side of Field 3, which
has a rank clover growth and is where most of the butterflies were.  6 or
so Southern Leopard Frogs in the Waterthrush Pond, about the same number in
diminutive Lake Olszewski.  1 Gray Squirrel.  14 deer including a 4-point
buck in Field 1.       

Best to all.-Harry Armistead, 523 E. Durham St., Philadelphia, PA
19119-1225.  215-248-4120.  Please, any off-list replies to: 
harryarmistead at hotmail dot com  (most messages sent to 74077.3176 & ff.
I cannot open at that primitive site)