Date: 10/25/25 8:47 am From: Harry Armistead <harryarmistead...> Subject: [MDBirding] Rigby's Folly, MD, Kiptopeke, VA, Roxborough, PA, variously Aug. 22-Oct. 25, 2025.
FERRY NECK, MD & KIPTOPEKE, VA, variously Aug. 22 - Oct. 25, 2025. and … Philadelphia.
AUGUST 22, 2025, Ramp Lane (most of it part of the E.S. of VA NWR), VA, 354 clapper rails counted by Audrey Anderson & Sage Church. No doubt a new state (world, even?) high count. These seen from Ramp Lane across the waterway (known locally as the Federal Cut) along the edge of the salt marsh. A most unusual concentration. I talked with Audrey 3 times about this. She showed me her photograph that shows dozens in one small area. They both scoped these birds also. At some point one should analyze the possible reasons for this unbelievable high count, perhaps an unusual tide. ?
The ”Gold Book”, Virginia’s birdlife: an annotated checklist by Stephen C. Rottenborn & Edward S. Brinkley, V.S.O. (Virginia Avifauna 7) 4th ed., 2007, p. 97 lists “over 350 found dead between Fisherman Is. and Back Bay “June 26-28, 1974 … or 20 Sep. 2003 and later, following Hurricane Isabel. “ But the high count of living individuals in the Gold Book, 4th edition, is 159, Chincoteague CBC, 27 Dec 1975.
Normally late in the day clapper rails are vocal here, easy to hear 10 or more, unless it is too windy or the tide too high. “When the tide starts to slack that’s when the sage hen will start to hollerin’ “ From hogchokers, popes and pigwitches.
There is some precedent for seeing numbers of secretive marsh birds here. A few years ago at this time of year George and his VSO field trip counted exactly 100 seaside sparrows.
Also of great interest, at BULL’S POND (just north of ES of Virginia NWR), 17 Common Gallinules “3 or 4 days ago” (as reported to me Oct. 1, 2025) also by Audrey and Sage plus several pied-billed grebes, probable breeders, too. Common gallinule has a spotty distribution in Virginia. The Gold Book (p. 101) lists an old record report of 50 at “Norfolk, Sept. 1951 [no comparable recent counts]” but does list 18 at Back Bay NWR CBC, 29 Dec. 1975. So these 17 would be a notable recent count. The observers stated these birds bred at Bull’s Pond. If I remember correctly Brian Patteson had trouble finding gallinules on his Virginia big year a long time ago.
FERRY NECK, MD, & KIPTOPEKE STATE PARK, VA, September 28 - October 7, 2025. My 85 years have taken some tolls. Therefore, on most days we are only at the hawk watch at K.S.P. in the afternoons. Consequently I did not see all, or even many, of these birds.
SEPTEMBER 28, SUNDAY. arrive at Rigby’s Folly at 4:01, clear or partly cloudy, calm, 76 degrees F. laughing gull 45, aerialists feeding over Edwards Point (on flying ants?). kingfisher. cormorant 2. blue jay 4. cardinal 1. bald eagle 1 adult. Canada goose 40. common nighthawk 1. great blue heron 1. There has been substantial rain and our Waterthrush Pond is completely full, having been bone dry when last seen September 21. gray squirrel 1. My rather poor screech-owl imitation was good enough to fool Merlin.
SEPTEMBER 29, MONDAY. gray squirrel 2, tufted titmouse 1, Carolina chickadee 1. Leave Rigby’s Folly at 10:52, 72, calm, becoming overcast. Big and great breakfast at the Easton Diner, that has a lot of 1950s images, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, et al., and great scrapple. Reach Kiptopeke State Park in the afternoon and am on the hawkwatch platform 4:20-5:30.
The CVWO crew records 1,746 raptors today, incl. 449 sharp-shinned hawks, 708 kestrels, and 107 merlin plus an olive-sided flycatcher. Dinner at Sting-Ray’s with them, Hal Wierenga and Lynn Davidson.
Some of my favorite food at Sting-Ray’s: clam chowder, stewed tomatoes, scrapple. The croutons in the otherwise good salad are the size of dice; I usually only eat 1 or 2.
the CVWO crew this fall consists of Sage Church (hawk counter), Audrey Anderson (hawk counter and monarch tagger), and Baxter Beamer (morning flight counter at Sunset Beach Resort). They are excellent, put in long days, and do lengthy and high quality writeups each day. How many other hawkwatches put in 10 or more hours a day??!!
SEPTEMBER 30, TUESDAY. Spectacular, a few merlins at day’s end, like fighter jets. Visit by Rudy Cashwell at our motel. Hawks counted by the C.V.W.O. team, 1,045: harrier 49, sharpie 222, Cooper’s 131, kestrel 357, merlin 86, peregrine 23, and osprey 159 plus 23 monarchs. Dramatic flybys, as usual this time of year, of male merlins towards day’s end.
For complete information about the KSP hawkwatch go to: hawkcount.org<http://hawkcount.org> From there the navigation is pretty easy.
OCTOBER 1, WEDNESDAY. At the Kiptopeke State Park hawk watch. 3,165 raptors, including 318 merlin, 892 sharp-shinned hawks, 148 Cooper’s hawks, 163 ospreys, 92 northern harriers (sometimes referred to by Brian Taber as “hairy northerners’), 1,459 American kestrels, and a paltry (for here) 18 peregrine falcons. … WHAT a day!
Some of the non-raptors seen: killdeer 24, white ibis 206, great blue heron 51, flicker 754, parula 13, warbler unIDd 67, Carolina saddlebags 12.
OCTOBER 2, THURSDAY. I do a Humpty Dumpty face plant and am so grateful for the help of Sage, Steve and others to get me up. In fact this entire visit so many are helpful, carrying chairs for us, escorting us back and forth to the car, and keeping an eye on our vagaries.
Another day of great hawking, 2,066: harrier 38, sharpie 812, Cooper’s 121, kestrel 361, broad-winged hawk 612, merlin 68, peregrine a meagre 17…. plus 598 flickers, 5,804 tree swallows, and 13 monarchs.
AT RAMP LANE 5:30-6:30 P.M., tide at least 1.5’ above normal, cool, cold, windy. bald eagle 3, snowy egret 22, great egret 1, great blue heron 2, peregrine falcon 1, merlin 6, tricolored heron 6, kingfisher, laughing gull 3, herring gull 1, royal tern 1, Cooper’s hawk 1, turkey vulture 8, black vulture 6.
OCTOBER 3, FRIDAY. At KSP most notable: 14 American white pelicans high overhead.
snowy egret 54, great egret 3, great blue heron 3, northern harrier 4, oystercatcher 15, Cooper’s hawk 2, cormorant 5, greater yellowlegs 4, herring gull 1, bald eagle 2, spotted sandpiper 1, clapper rail 15, little blue heron 6, tricolored heron 6, yellow-crowned night-heron 1, night-heron unIDd 1, white ibis 670.
OCTOBER 4, SATURDAY. At KSP a Swainson’s hawk. Liz and I miss it, arrive late. A wood stork goes over high (photographed). 548 raptors, incl. osprey 40, harrier 23, sharpy 211, Cooper’s 86, kestrel 116, merlin 39. peregrine 20, bald eagle 7. CVWO crew puts in 12.5 hours. The wood stork flew over the platform (photographed), the 4th ever seen here.
Here’s an example of the non-avian critters seen by the CVWO crew today: monarch 14, common buckeye 27, American snout 1, common green darner 4, swamp darner 3, wandering glider 1, spot-singed glider 3, Carolina saddlebags 1, and black saddlebags 7. They also record 19 bird species that are not raptors. They list 39 non-raptor species Oct. 2 and 38 on Oct. 1.
OCTOBER 5, SUNDAY. Swainson’s hawk seen again today to much better advantage, and with 14 observers scoping and photographing it right over the platform, c. 3:08 P.M.
hawks 558: harrier 18, sharpie 182, Cooper’s 77, kestrel 156, merlin 27, peregrine 53, and osprey 31, plus a Lincoln’s sparrow.
Ramp Lane, 6-7, 68, SW 5. snowy egret 36, great egret 7, tricolored heron 16, great blue heron 6. cormorant 6, herring gull 1, royal tern (heard by Hal), little blue heron 1, laughing gull 50, white ibis 506 (thanks, again, for Lynn’s count), bald eagle 2, clapper rail 10, black duck 2, eastern cottontail 1. The eagles settling in ON their nest.
A lot of goodies and great hawk totals this fall yet a poor fall peregrine flight.
Lynn hears a squirrel tree frog at KSP today. The herp guides do not show its range to be anywhere on the Delmarva Peninsula, but the VA Herp. society has found them here.
Every morning Baxter Beamer counts the morning bird flight species a few miles south of the Kiptopeke State Park hawkwatch at Sunset Beach Report (as per the above URL). Most of the landbirds are reorienting, heading north early in the day. His daily reports are thorough, lengthy, and excellent. Sometimes birds pour through the gap in the trees here.
I may or may not have been the one who discovered this phenomenon there, although Fred Scott, Walter Smith, and others had seen similar but more spread out flights as early as c. 1963 a few miles north in what was to become KSP. Over the next 50 years they and their compadres would capture and band 181 species of 346,130 individual birds there.
One morning from the door of what was then room 145 in what was then America House (now SBR) I saw in a few minutes 90 each of Baltimore Oriole and Eastern Kingbird headed north, low, in that gap one day in the late 1960s. After that for 20 or so years I counted those birds every morning, mostly in the week or so around Labor Day weekend. Usually the flights ended before 8 A.M. One year on an August 31 I saw 1,000+ warblers of 18 species in this manner.
For perhaps 10 years my family spent a week or more here, always in, I think it was Room 145 (the # has since been changed), a celebration of the end of summer before the children’s school year began.
We lodged this time (2025) at Cape Charles Milestone Lodge, some might say Millstone, just S of the turnoff to Cape Charles on the W side of Rt. 13. It’s in a dense, lovely woodland with large loblolly pines, big enough so that in loggers’ terms they are “gator-backed”. That’s fine as far as it goes, but getting the TV and our computer to work was, well, shall we say, challenging, and, the base of the toilet has a sort of slow sump leak. And, the TV screen is rather small. But, in all fairness, the room itself was good.
Right across a small adjacent side road is a fascinating dump area full of quantities of rusty, abandoned heavy equipment, bulldozers, steam rollers, and much else, as well as abundant weeds waiting to be identified, all behind decrepit but intimidating metal fencing. One could envision tours of this place that qualifies as “industrial archaeology”, exhibit A. I’m not kidding.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE (in part, forgive me for not remembering all the folks): Bob Ake, Bob Anderson & Thuy Tran, Mario Balitbit, Nancy Barnhart, Ed Bowen, Rudy Cashwell, Lynn Davidson & Hal Wierenga, Sue & Wes Earp, Kathy Fountaine & her adorable corgi Roxy, Dave Fischer, Doug Lehman, Sam & Sheryl McNair, Jen Ottinger, Andrew Rapp, Steve Thornhill.
OCTOBER 6, MONDAY. Leave Kiptopeke for MD (Ferry Neck). At Rigby’s Folly, 3:45 - 7:02. clear, W 5 changing to SW 5, temps in the 70s, 76 at the start. A beaut. Tide medium and rising. After an 154-mile drive from Cape Charles Milestone Lodge near Cheriton, VA, near where I see a pickup truck with the car tags REDDRUM. 18 species at the old place, now in the family for 98 years. Mostly sit out by the dock.
great blue heron 3, great egret 1, blue jay 3, cormorant 6, flicker 1, American crow 5, kingfisher 1, black vulture 4, turkey vulture 9, laughing gull 75 (most going to roost as usual out in the Choptank River mouth,[to escape great horned owl predation?]), ring-billed gull 4, mockingbird 1, bald eagle 1, Forster’s tern 1, eastern bluebird 1, red-winged blackbird 1, mallard 17 (foraging at the head of the cove), duck unIDd 9.
5 flocks totaling 54 Canada geese, one flock of 11 has 2 white birds flying with/in it. I thought, oh, good, 2 snogies (a Jared Sparksism), but they are (!!) snowy egrets. Mixed company, eh?!
6 fishes (young striped bass?) chase small minnows, some right next to the dock. The minnows hurl themselves out of the water, get ahead of the fish 1’-2’. Sea roaches 110. silver-spotted skipper 1. gray squirrel 1.
Lawn mowed recently. The Waterthrush Pond, full on Sept. 28, is now bone dry. A marvelous full moon rises at the head of the cove. Perfect clarity. Perfect. As if one could head out the driveway, hang a left up Anderby Hall Road, and be close to the moon. As dramatic a moonrise as I have ever seen. Hunter’s moon, also called harvest moon. An unforgettable spectacle.
“I bind unto myself today
the virtues of a starlit heaven,
the glorious sun’s live-giving ray,
the whiteness of the moon at even.”
- attributed to St. Patrick.
OCTOBER 7, TUESDAY. Leave for Philadelphia at 10:35, when it is clear, 72, SW5. This time Merlin does not recognize my admittedly poor screech-owl imitation, although it often has at other times. great blue heron 1, blue jay 3, gray squirrel 1.
Philadelphia, PA (northwest part, Roxborough neighborhood, the yard where George A. and Kristin Klein live), barely an acre or so, but with wonderful plantings and a good view of the sky to the North. A few days ago George found the 1st yard towhee, finally, but it was species 130 for their yard. And a day later a flyover American pipit, # 131. Nice flight, 28 species, a few hrs. mid-day, on Oct. 15, 2025. Some of it:
Canada goose 348 (17 flocks), chimney swift 54, cormorant 12, t. vulture 16, sharpie 2, Cooper’s 2, bald eagle 1 adult, kestrel 1, peregrine 1, a nice male purple finch at close range, common raven 1. AND 2 gray squirrels, 2 eastern chipmunks, and an eastern cottontail.
On October 18 George saw an influx of migrants, 44 species:
only 6 Canada geese but 6 sharpies, 3 Coops, a harrier, a merlin, 2 redshoulders, 1 redtail, 5 sapsuckers, 3 rc kinglets, 5 rb nuts, 9 waxwings, 11 chippies, 75 juncos, 6 purple finches, a pipit, 10 whitethroats.
OCTOBER 23, back to Rigby’s Folly, Ferry Neck, 2 fox squirrels, and in the morning George found 53 species including these: surf scoter 9, ruddy duck 4, Forster’s tern 45, horned grebe 4, common loon 8, screech-owl 2, sapsucker 2, blue-headed vireo 1, blue jay 37, rough-winged swallow 1, ruby-crowned kinglet 12, golden-crowned kinglet 2, brown-headed nuthatch 2, bluebird 16, chipping sparrow 13, white-throated sparrow 34, song sparrow 14, rusty blackbird1, and (careful estimate) myrtle warbler 55. The cool forecast and favorable winds for the next 2 days = probably even more birds then.
OCTOBER 25, George finds a Lincoln’s sparrow here.
Best to all. - Harry Armistead, Bellevue & Philadelphia.
--
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Group 'Maryland & DC Birding'.
To view group guidelines or change email preferences, visit this group on the web at http://www.mdbirding.com Unfamiliar with a hotspot mentioned on this list? Quickly locate it here - http://www.mdbirding.com/hotspot.html ---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Maryland & DC Birding" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mdbirding+<unsubscribe...>
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mdbirding/<LV8PR84MB3880F7EC70868DAD62650259CFFEA...>
