Flooded Field where the Ruff and many other shore birds were seen -- Covey's landing Road, Talbot County, Maryland. Eastern Fence Lizard -- Old Bradley Road, Wicomico County, Maryland. Brown Elfin -- Old Bradley Road, Wicomico County, Maryland.
After spending Saturday driving around the dry sandy upland areas of Caroline County, I decide to head back towards the swampy lowlands of the Nassawango to try to photograph Yellow-throated Warblers and other bird species that had arrived over the past week. Yellow-throated Warblers are one of the first neo-migrants to arrive on their breeding grounds on Delmarva. They breed in lowland and coastal pine forests and are easiest to locate in the early Spring because their calls are distinctive and are not drowned out by the songs of later migrants. The Nassawango area has one of the largest populations of Yellow-throated Warblers on Maryland's eastern shore. As soon as I arrived on Bear Swamp Rd in Wicomico County I heard the Yellow-throated Warblers calling in the pine trees. By using a screech owl tape I was able to get one bird to come down from the tree top and get a photo. Prairie Warblers unlike Yellow-throateds live in scrubby cut-over areas. They had arrived over the past week and were calling incessently. American Redstarts, White-eyed and Yellow-throated Vireos, Northern Parulas, and Ovenbirds had also migrated into the Nassawango. After the Nassawngo I headed to Old Bradley Rd. Old Bradley is a small sand road that parallels the Nanticoke River. The road is surrounded by sandy pine forest. There are trails where you can walk through the pines towards the river and eventually run into a white cedar/cypress swamp. I have always had good luck on these trails and today was no different. I saw four Brown Elfins! They were a new state butterfly for me and it was only the second time I had ever seen this species. I was super excited and got a couple great photographs. Eastern Fence Lizards are the most common lizard on Delmarva in sandy pine enviroments. These lizards are a mix of browns and grays on top but if you catch one and turn it upside down they have the most beautiful blue , black, and white undersides. The photo I took shows some of the blue underneath the lizards chin. While leaving Old Bradley Matt Hafner called me on my cell and told me that a Ruff had been spotted in a flooded field in northern Talbot County. This was exciting news. Ruffs are very rare in Maryland but annual along the Delaware coast and it was going to be new for my Talbot County bird list. In a field along Covey's Landing Road was a large depression that had filled with water from the rains earlier in the week. The depression was full of shorebirds and gulls. Pectoral and Least Sandpipers, Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, Wilson's Snipe, and Dunlin were all observed. With the help of my spotting scope I soon located the Ruff at the far end of the depression, approximently 100 yards from my closest vantage point. My lense was not good enough to get a identifiable photograph, so I took a picture through my spotting scope by setting the end of my camera lense to the eyepiece of the spotting scope and used the scope as a lense extension. After about one hundred photos I was finally able to get a shot that I thought was exceptable. Ruffs are awesome birds. During breeding season they can come in many different colors from pure black, buffy brown, and white. They are an old world breeder which annually strays to the east coast of North America.
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