Bombay Hook & Environs 5/18-5/19--Common Gallinule, Black-necked Stilt, American Avocet, Red-necked Phalarope, Grasshopper Sparrow

Common Gallinule, Bear Swamp Pool
(click any photo to enlarge)

Shari & I spent a rain-soaked 11th Wedding Anniversary in Delaware, birding Bombay Hook and surrounding fields. With the forecast showing hourly rows of cloud icons spewing rain, we thought of ditching the whole idea but since there is a great Indian restaurant in Dover and I had promised to finally go to the Victrola Museum which I had always resisted, we decided to go anyway and I'm happy we did.

This is probably blasphemy coming from a Jersey birder, but I prefer Bombay Hook over Brig. Brig is one big loop and once you're on it, you're on it for 8 miles, while Bombay Hook is a series of pools and fields that offer different habitats and there are a number of patterns you can drive--if the birding is unproductive you're not stuck in a bird-free zone for miles.

Black-necked Stilts, Bear Swamp Pool

There are 2 year birds I hope/expect to get when we go to Delaware. One--American Avocet--is almost a gimme, while the other--Black-necked Stilt--can be a little more elusive.  When we arrived at the refuge, after stopping a couple of times to scan the flooded fields where there were hundreds of plovers, dowitchers and Dunlins, it was drizzly and windy. The first pool, Raymond, had thousands of shorebirds, mostly Semipalmated Sandpipers, more dowitchers and Dunlins. The second pool, Shearness, had no shorebirds as it was deeper, but contained both white egrets and Great Blue Herons, as well as geese. I was idly counting geese when I found the Black-necked Stilt feeding alone just to the right of the geese. A couple of years ago we were in this exact spot (or so it seems in retrospect) when we were down there with Bob Auster and he got his life stilt. The rain continued for most of our drive, so were weren't able to walk any trails and I only briefly pished at the turnaround at Finis Pool. We did see 4 more stilts in Bear Swamp Pool which at least satisfied one condition of its name since there are no bears there and no swamp that I've ever found. I've seen it when there was no pool either. For the day, counting the Semipalmated Plovers we saw on Leipsic-Smyra Road and the Black-bellied Plovers on Whitehall Neck Road, we had 41 species, not bad for 3 hours with the windshield wipers slapping.

A very wet Bald Eagle

Today, our original plan was to go to the Victrola Museum first then bird the refuge again because there was supposed to be a break in the weather late morning, but instead it looked like the dry spell was going to be earlier so we drove north from Dover to the refuge. We got American Avocets first thing at Raymond Pool, which  seemed higher than yesterday, no surprise with all the rain. There were very few shorebirds in it while yesterday it was teeming with them. They all seemed to be on the mud flats in the bay since the tide was low. What struck us most today was the huge number of Bald Eagles we saw. Normally it is no big thing to find a few eagles on the refuge, but we were seeing 5 or 6 at a time just sitting on the flats or roosting in trees. I listed 20 for eBird but that is probably an undercount. Someone two days before listed 69 and claimed it was an exact count! Those are more like Alaska numbers than Delaware.

I was satisfied having found our two target birds, so when we got to Bear Swamp Pool and saw a birder in a car up ahead pointing down into the reeds I was really happy to discover he was pointing out a Common Gallinule. I jumped out of the car, thinking the bird would be listed as rare, but they're "expected" in Kent County, Delaware. Still glad to get a good photo of one walking. You rarely see them hoofing it.

Turkey Vulture with a wind-blown ruffed collar

Driving out of the refuge we stopped at field on the road between Bear Swamp and Shearness to see what a couple of birder were looking at. As soon as Shari shut off the car she hear the little buzzy call of a Grasshopper Sparrow, which I missed, of course. However, after a few minutes of standing in what was amazingly dry weather, we both go on the sparrow sitting atop a sweet gum sapling. It was singing, if you want to call it that, and another sparrow was responding from across the road. Photography on this bird was not an option due to distance and activity.

We had lunch at our favorite Indian restaurant and than found the Victrola Museum in the "historic" section of Dover. I always think historic districts in little towns and cities are only there because they weren't worth tearing down and redeveloping, not because the citizens cherished their dilapidated structures. For whatever inexplicable reason, Shari has wanted to go to this museum since she saw it listed in a "Thing to do in Dover" pamphlet and I've always resisted, thinking it would cut into birding time, but, as it was our anniversary I agreed beforehand that we would go and, frankly, it was interesting. E.J. Johnson, the man who started the Victor Company, invented some essential spring for Victrolas and from that humble start made a fortune in manufacturing the players and recording the discs that played on them. The museum collects Victor records (but not RCA Victor) and has 50,000 of them. They also have dozens of vintage Victrolas, but what I found most amusing was their gigantic collection of Nipper models. Those of us old enough to remember records know who Nipper is, even if we don't recognize the name. For those who don't, here he is:


It wasn't raining after we left the museum, so we thought we do one more run around the refuge on the way home. We were driving up Whitehall Neck Road, which leads into the refuge, when we stopped because we saw thousands of shorebirds in the fields which only have very short sprouting plants in them and after all the rain are virtual ponds, maybe lakes. There were hundreds of Black-bellied Plovers in the giant puddles and a couple of birders standing on the side of the road. We stopped and I told Shari, half-jokingly, to ask them if they had seen any American Golden Plovers. "One" was the answer. I jumped out of the car, just as 10,000 assorted plovers, dowitchers, dunlins, and one American Golden Plover, flew off. And there were still hundreds of birds in the field.

One of the birders, peering into his scope, said he didn't see the golden plover anymore but, hey, here's a Red-necked Phalarope. He was quite casual. I called to Shari to get out our scope, looked through his, and, what else, couldn't find the bird. Shari set up the scope, looked, boom, found the bird. I looked, looked, looked, and didn't find the bird. Rain had started, first an annoying drizzle, then heavy enough for me to go back to the car to get my rain gear back on. Shari kept scanning the little corn stalks where the phalarope had been feeding and just when I said "I hate to end this day on such a sour note" she found the bird again and this time I could see it too, red neck and thin beak, actively feeding, proving once again Zirlin's 2nd law of birding which is you won't find the bird until you sincerely give up on finding it.

We drove into the refuge but got no farther than the parking lot, as by now the rain had become torrential and neither of us had any interest in looking for birds through rivulets of water on our car windows. We left and it wasn't a half hour before I got an email from the eBird reviewer of Kent County querying my listing.

Five year birds for me (and 21 for Shari), good food, and one more item (the museum) off Shari's bucket list made for a very entertaining if very wet weekend. Happy Anniversary, sweetheart.

Our two day list.

Species               Location

Canada Goose   Bombay Hook

Mallard   Bombay Hook

American Black Duck   Bombay Hook

Horned Grebe   Bombay Hook

Double-crested Cormorant   Bombay Hook

Great Blue Heron   Bombay Hook

Great Egret   Bombay Hook

Snowy Egret   Bombay Hook

Black-crowned Night-Heron   Bombay Hook

Turkey Vulture   Bombay Hook

Osprey   Bombay Hook

Bald Eagle   Whitehall Neck Rd.

Red-tailed Hawk   Bombay Hook

Clapper Rail   Bombay Hook

Common Gallinule   Bombay Hook

Black-necked Stilt   Bombay Hook

American Avocet   Bombay Hook

Black-bellied Plover   Whitehall Neck Rd.

Semipalmated Plover   Smyrna Leipsic Rd

Dunlin   Bombay Hook

Least Sandpiper   Whitehall Neck Rd.

Semipalmated Sandpiper   Bombay Hook

Short-billed Dowitcher   Whitehall Neck Rd.

Red-necked Phalarope   Whitehall Neck Rd.

Spotted Sandpiper   Bombay Hook

Greater Yellowlegs   Bombay Hook

Willet   Bombay Hook

Herring Gull   Bombay Hook

Caspian Tern   Bombay Hook

Forster's Tern   Bombay Hook

Black Skimmer   Bombay Hook

Eastern Phoebe   Bombay Hook

Great Crested Flycatcher   Bombay Hook

Eastern Kingbird   Bombay Hook

White-eyed Vireo   Bombay Hook

Blue Jay   Bombay Hook

Fish Crow   304 S Governors Ave, Dover

Purple Martin   Bombay Hook

Tree Swallow   Bombay Hook

Barn Swallow   Bombay Hook

House Wren   Bombay Hook

Marsh Wren   Bombay Hook

Carolina Wren   Bombay Hook

Wood Thrush   Bombay Hook

American Robin   Bombay Hook

Gray Catbird   Bombay Hook

Brown Thrasher   Bombay Hook

Northern Mockingbird   N Dupont Hwy, Dover

European Starling   Smyrna Leipsic Rd

Ovenbird   Bombay Hook

Common Yellowthroat   Bombay Hook

American Redstart   Bombay Hook

Yellow Warbler   Bombay Hook

Grasshopper Sparrow   Bombay Hook

Field Sparrow   Bombay Hook

Eastern Towhee   Bombay Hook

Northern Cardinal   Bombay Hook

Blue Grosbeak   Bombay Hook

Indigo Bunting   Bombay Hook

Red-winged Blackbird   Whitehall Neck Rd.

Brown-headed Cowbird   Bombay Hook

Common Grackle   Bombay Hook

Boat-tailed Grackle   Bombay Hook

American Goldfinch   Whitehall Neck Rd.

House Sparrow   Bombay Hook

Blue Grosbeak