Delaware 2013, Part 1 - a.k.a. the not a lot of knot yet post!!!

It is hard to believe that a year has passed since I was in Delaware. This year’s trip seemed to creep up on me a little and it was almost a surprise when, last Friday, I found myself heading to Nigel and Jacquie’s in Norfolk to link up with them for the trip to the States. After a lovely evening admiring their beautiful house and garden, I went to bed listening to starlings scrabbling around in the roof and by 7am on Saturday we were on route to Heathrow Terminal 1. 

The flight was uneventful, if slightly bumpy at times, with the highlight being the chance to see The Hobbit, which I had missed at the cinema. Before we knew it, we were landing and Nigel, Jacquie, Richard, Graham and I headed to the immigration desk. As we were waiting, we spotted Guy’s BA flight landing and were optimistic that we would all get through nice and quickly and soon be heading to Slaughter Beach. We started to get a little worried when the line of people coming off the BA flight reduced to a trickle with no sign of Guy. Eventually, he appeared and joined the back of a now very long line of foreigners waiting to be let into the country. We waved from the front of the queue and left him to it as we went to re-acquaint ourselves with our luggage. 

A few minutes later and we were through customs and saying hello to Rob and Kevin in the arrivals hall. ‘Guy won’t be long’ we assured them. Wrong! An hour later, we were beginning to wonder whether Guy had been invited for a behind the scenes tour of the immigration suites as he still hadn’t appeared. Thankfully, he turned up eventually and off we went. 

Saturday evening (US time – middle of the night UK time) was spent meeting the American volunteers and settling in. The warm and humid evening saw me set up my little sleeping space next to a window which was thrown open wide to cope with the heat. After dinner, Kevin informed us that there weren’t very many target species (knot, turnstone, sanderling) around as yet and there were peregrines causing havoc in Mispillion Harbour but that the following day we were going to try for a catch on Back Beach.  

The open window came back to haunt me at first light on Sunday as I was woken by the sound of hundreds of laughing gulls (who really do live up to their name), dozens of purple martins and a mourning dove. There are worse ways to be woken! When everyone else was also awake (at a slightly more civilised hour) we set out for Mispillion Harbour. A small group went out first to set the net and wait on the island whilst ‘basecamp’ followed on and sat anchored in the boat just off the island waiting for the action.

 

Back Beach, Mispillion Harbour at dawn

We waited and whilst we did, we were treated to the site of fourteen turkey vultures (the American equivalent of our buzzard) congregating on the marsh to feed on something. We really wanted to go and find out what it was but weren’t able to. The local osprey weren’t too impressed by their presence! At this point, the most numerous birds on the island were laughing gull. We were slightly lacking in shorebirds. Jacquie took the opportunity to do some work, holding on very tightly to her papers in the wind, whilst the rest of us chatted and enjoyed the view. As the wind strength grew, so did the number of layers we were all wearing. Unfortunately the number of shorebirds didn’t! Basecamp took a trip around the harbour looking to see if there were any birds to move into the catching area. The pilings in the harbour mouth were full of turnstone and sanderling but they didn’t want to be moved so we called it a day and headed back to the house. 

The afternoon was spent visiting other beaches in the area to do counts of what birds were around and look for leg flags. I took the opportunity to visit Prime Hook beaches, which I hadn’t been to last year. The wind was by now making walking difficult; keeping a scope still was almost impossible. The birds were all hunkered down off the beach making leg flag re-sighting impossible. There was however, a seriously impressive number of black-bellied plovers (grey plover) with the count heading towards 600 birds, most of which were heading towards full breeding plumage – mint! 

With few birds still in the harbour, Monday morning saw us heading down to Port Mahon to try to catch turnstone. The rocky shores along this stretch have been made even rockier by works to protect the road, with the result that there is virtually only one place left to try to cannon net. With the tide rising, we quickly set a net and Graham and I, with Guy driving the Jeep alongside us ready to race quickly back to the catch, walked the rocky shore in an attempt to persuade the turnstone to head towards the catching area. It didn’t take long for birds to be catchable and suddenly, Richard came over the radio shouting ‘Kevin has fired, Kevin has fired’. The first catch of the season resulted in twenty-two new turnstone being ringed and flagged. 

On Tuesday morning, a group of us headed out at dawn to check whether there had been a knot influx into Mispillion Harbour overnight. Sadly there hadn’t been but we were treated to a beautiful morning with gorgeous light and fabulous views of the ospreys nesting in the Nature Centre car park. On the way back to the house we stopped to coo over the killdeer and her four tiny little chicks that are dicing with death next to the road and I then saw my first new species of the trip – cliff swallow. It was very helpfully sitting next to a tree swallow which was useful for identification purposes. 

Osprey in the Nature Centre car park

Dowitchers and least sandpipers along the road to Mispillion Harbour

Killdeer with one of its four chicks

Cliff swallow (left) and tree swallow (right)

Cliff swallow

Tree swallow

Back at house we re-grouped and most of us headed back to Port Mahon to try for another turnstone catch. This time, we left a little earlier and had time to set two nets. After twinkling the length of the shore twice, enough birds decided to play ball and we fired both nets on a nice catch of thirty-nine turnstone, four least sandpipers, five semipalmated sandpipers and a willet. I was lucky enough to ring virtually the entire catch, which included two new species for me (least sandpiper and willet). I was also lucky enough to get another great sighting of an osprey with a fish.

Willet

Least sandpiper

Osprey with fish

Later that afternoon, my hoovering and cooking duties were diverted elsewhere and I was lucky enough to get to go on a boat trip out into Delaware Bay to look for birds using the beaches along the Bay (that take a long time to walk to). I wasn’t entirely prepared for what happened when we passed outside of the no wake zone. Kevin asked whether we were ready and then put his foot down (or whatever the boating equivalent of this is!). The word exhilarating only just covers it! Even getting a face full of spray on numerous occasions was worth it for the thrill! Unfortunately though, there were no more birds on these beaches than in the harbour! On the way back to the harbour, Nigel suddenly exclaimed that he might just have seen a dolphin or a shark. Kevin slowed the boat and we were treated to twenty minutes of dolphin after dolphin swimming past. One even delighted us by jumping out of the water really close to the boat. None of us are cetacean experts but we decided that they had to be Atlantic Bottlenose given that they are the only species known to be in Delaware Bay! 

Wednesday was a more sedate day. After another early morning recce to Mispillion Harbour to look for the (still absent) knot, I spent the morning on Slaughter Beach taking photos. I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon at the house. Mid-morning, I nipped out onto the balcony where my bright pink jumper attracted the attention of a cracking male ruby-throated hummingbird who flew within a foot of me, buzzing and chattering – magic! 

Horseshoe crabs on Slaughter Beach

A pair of horseshoe crabs (female at front, male hooked onto heer back)

It's a crab eat crab world!

Dunlin

Semis

Mockingbird sitting on a horseshoe crab

Later in the afternoon and I was on the boat heading out to try to re-sight colour rings on Back Beach. The trip proved to be somewhat futile due to a low flying air force plane and the two peregrine fly pasts! Only one knot flag was read, but at least there were a few there (about 50). Frustratingly a couple of other flags were seen but the birds were so flighty that they flew before they could be read. There may not have been many birds out there, but I did have two lifers in caspian tern and fourteen glossy ibis in full summer plumage. 

We are hoping that tomorrow will be the day and the early morning recce to Mispillion Harbour will find thousands of knot waiting to be adorned with flags… well, we have to dream don’t we?