Cornell Lab Bird Cams | Virtual Bird Watching at its Best!

Cornell Lab Bird Cams | Virtual Bird Watching at its Best!

Hawks have hatched! 

Ring-necked ducks



Just recently, ring-necked ducks (Aythya collaris) arrived at Baker's Meadow.  There are about five male/female pairs swimming about in the deeper parts of the pond.  They've come from warmer southern wintering grounds.  I'm not sure if they are here to stay and nest or if they are just stopping over on their way north to breed.  Unlike the dabbling mallards, ring-necked ducks can be seen diving underwater.  There's plenty of food here for them - lots of insect larvae, freshwater clams, and aquatic vegetation.  From a distance, the males appear black with a white ring at the base and near the tip of their beak.  In reality, their heads are overlaid with irridescent purple. The females are brown with a white beak ring.  The "ring neck" in their name comes from a dark brown ring around the male's neck which is difficult to see from a distance.  Look closely and you can see the ring in the photo below.



Both have gold colored eyes, but the female also sports a white eye ring.

 



The ring-necked ducks must share the pond with quite a few bossy Canada geese.  Lucky for them, the mute swans seem to be absent.

Calvert Cliffs State Park, Maryland

The final destination in Maryland was Calvert Cliffs State Park in Lusby on the Chesapeake Bay. 

 

 

The 1.8 mile hike to the water was easy and scenic, with plenty of wildlife and varying habitat.

 

 

 

Can you spot the two fence lizards -- one gray and the other brown with a blue underside -- in the center of the photo?  They were having a territorial skirmish just outside the parking area.

 

 

 

A red-tailed hawk waited patiently for a meal to appear near the trail.

 

 

 

Turtles basked along logs in the marsh.

 



 

 

 

Too bad this boardwalk was closed for repairs.

 

 

Northern cricket frogs of varying colors bounced around the water's edge and along the sides of the trail.



 



 

A zebra swallowtail flitted from flower to flower.

 

 

This watersnake was weaving its way through the dense shrubs along the waterside edge of the trail. We met a ranger along the way who mentioned seeing a cottonmouth earlier that day.

 

 

A five lined skink zipped up, down and around a tree.

 

 

Finally, the trail opened up onto the beach and the fossil hunting began.

 

 

 

What we found:

 

A shell fragment of Chesapecten nefrens - an ancient scallop.

 

 

Snaggletooth shark teeth

 

 

Tiger shark tooth

 

 

Lemon shark teeth

 

 

Ray dental plates

 

 

A sand tiger shark tooth

 

 

A piece of a megalodon tooth

 

 

A gray (or requiem) shark tooth

 

 

A nearly complete megalodon tooth

 

Even on the way back to the hotel, we spotted this osprey near its nest on a platform near the side of the road.

 

 

 

 

 

A great day of hiking, nature watching and fossil hunting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 





Fossils from Maryland (Miocene)

Next we drove to Brownies beach in Bayfront park on the Chesapeake Bay. There we found fossilized shark teeth, vertebra, and dental plates from the Miocene epoch.



A shark or other fish vertebra

Lemon shark teeth

Tiger shark teeth




Sand tiger shark teeth

Gray or Requiem shark tooth

Snaggletooth shark tooth

Ray dental plates

Staying on Chesapeake Bay, we headed to Matoaka cottages. We were hoping to get our hands on the elusive megalodon tooth, but it wasn't our lucky day. It was a disappointing hunt although there were a couple of new fossils we hadn't yet collected.

Astrhelia coral







Crab claw fragment

Marine mammal rib fragments

ray dental plate

Gray shark tooth

snaggletooth shark tooth

Turritella snail shell











 







 

Turkey Tracks

Last night's light snowfall was just enough to record the animals passing through the neighborhood long after everyone had gone to bed.  This morning I came across turkey   (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) tracks which are always in the same part of the street, just beyond the forest trail that runs behind neighborhood homes.  Turkey tracks are a special favorite of the kids.  They remind us of dinosaur tracks.  In this photo you can see tiny tracks from another bird crossing over the top of the turkey track.

We hardly ever see turkeys in our current neighborhood during the day.  The one time I did, a group of 3-4 flew through our back yard (quite a spectacle), landing next door.  They were there to feed on the seeds under the bird feeders.

 

 

When we lived further south, turkeys were commonplace during the daytime.  One summer a female visited our yard with 13 little ones in tow.  Another time, we arrived home to find a tom, tail spread out, accompanied by three hens on our front lawn.  Toms can weigh as much as 24 pounds while hens top out around 12 pounds.

At this time of year, turkeys are scratching around looking for acorns, nuts and berries. Mating begins around March and the poults hatch in June.



Fossiling Trip - Purse State Park, Maryland

We headed south to Washington, DC for April vacation and after exhausting ourselves touring museums for three days, we decided to enjoy some outdoor time fossil hunting.  Our first stop was Purse State Park along the Potomac River in Maryland.   We had the shoreline to ourselves.  Even though it was cool and rainy, we were rewarded with a great many fossilized shark teeth and ray dental plates.


It's a short stroll through the woods down to the shore



The shoreline at Purse State Park



Shark teeth and ray dental plates



Sand tiger shark teeth (Carcharias hopei) and (Striatolamia striata) 

Internal mold of a turritella snail (Turritella sp.)




Eagle ray dental plates (Myliobatis sp.)

These fossils hail from the Paleocene epoch, 66.5 to 55.8 million years ago.  Learn more about this epoch and its fascinating fauna at the Smithsonian website: http://paleobiology.si.edu/geotime/main/htmlversion/paleocene1.html