Brigantine 7/15--Green-head Flies & Ruby-throated Hummingbird

We took a turn around the 8 mile loop at Brig today. It was high tide when we arrived, so there weren't as many shorebirds as we expected, though by the end of the circuit we'd tallied some good ones like Whimbrel, both dowitchers and both yellowlegs, as well as Shari's fave American Oystercatcher.

Green-head flies are the main problem in summer at Brigantine--they're big, they're annoying, and they're vicious--one bit me through my t-shirt this afternoon. The only good thing about them is that they're slow and therefor easy to kill. They also have a tendency to die in your car, especially in the brake light in the back window. It is a perverse point of pride among birders to compare the number of dead flies in their lights--the more flies the more you've been to Brig. No one can figure how they get in there and no one can figure how to get the corpses out. Shari has also recently discovered them in the ceiling light--again, we have no idea how they manage to get in there. We're going to have the car serviced next week and we want to ask the mechanics how to clean out the little bastards.

Interestingly, we found a lot of birds while eating lunch at one of the benches near the visitor's center, including my first Ruby-throated Hummingbird of the year--how did I go this long without seeing one? There were also a couple of Eastern Bluebirds (supposedly rare for Brig this time of year) picking bugs out of the grass and a couple of titmice, a bird I haven't seen since either late winter or early spring. 49 species today; if I'd felt more like fending off the flies I could probably have found more--someone said he had 82 species today--he must have some powerful insect spray.
Canada Goose  100
American Black Duck  5
Mallard  1
Ruddy Duck  11
Double-crested Cormorant  10
Great Blue Heron  5
Great Egret  75
Snowy Egret  45
Glossy Ibis  35
Turkey Vulture  1
Osprey  8
Peregrine Falcon  2
American Oystercatcher  10
Greater Yellowlegs  1
Willet  2
Lesser Yellowlegs  9
Whimbrel  3
Semipalmated Sandpiper  25
Short-billed Dowitcher  10
Long-billed Dowitcher  1
Laughing Gull  50
Ring-billed Gull  2
Herring Gull  2
Great Black-backed Gull  3
Forster's Tern  150
Black Skimmer  2
Mourning Dove  3
Ruby-throated Hummingbird  1
American Crow  3
Fish Crow  1
Northern Rough-winged Swallow  1
Purple Martin  25
Tree Swallow  2
Barn Swallow  25
Carolina Chickadee  1
Tufted Titmouse  2
Carolina Wren  1
Eastern Bluebird  2
American Robin  1
Gray Catbird  3
Northern Mockingbird  3
Brown Thrasher  1
Yellow Warbler  1
Eastern Towhee  1
Chipping Sparrow  2
Red-winged Blackbird  25
Common Grackle  1
Boat-tailed Grackle  3
American Goldfinch  3