Birds of Baltimore, Dundalk and Annapolis, Maryland, USA

I got up early on Monday, 11th June 2018 to check out of my hotel and catch a subway train from Long Island to Manhattan, and I cannot say thank you enough to all the kind and chivalrous gentlemen who helped me with my bag up and down the stairs in the subway stations, which did not have functioning elevators or escalators, you are simply the best.  

The Greyhound bus left the Port Authority Bus Station in Manhattan, New York at 9am and it arrived on time in Baltimore to the gleaming, new Haines Street bus station in Baltimore at 12.40pm and these bus stations were like airports for buses and very nice, and my one-way bus ticket only cost $13.50.  The journey was non-stop and very comfortable, and the bus was new with very comfortable, black leather seats, and it had wi-fi, but I didn't bother taking out my laptop, and I just enjoyed the fantastic scenery and countryside from New York to Baltimore.  A plane would have taken longer due to check-in times before flights and security, and the train trip was also longer due to stops at train stations along the way, and they were much more expensive. I got a taxi from the bus-station to my hotel in Downtown Baltimore near the Inner Harbour which only took a few minutes.

After checking in to my hotel, I walked down to the Inner Harbour and had lunch and went into Barnes & Noble to buy some American bird identification books and I opted for the National Wildlife Federation's "Field Guide To Birds of North America" by Edward S. Brinkley and National Geographic's "Backyard Guide to the Birds of North America" by Jonathan Alderer and Paul Hess, and the first book contained photos while the second one had drawings, and I reckoned between the two of them, I should be able to identify the birds I saw and photographed on my trip.

The first birds I saw in Baltimore were Old World feral pigeons, house sparrows, and mallard ducks on an artificial island in the Inner Harbour.  But when I looked out further to sea with my binoculars I got my first glimpses of a Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) in flight, another tick for me.  

The Double-crested Cormorant is the most widespread cormorant in North America and it is slightly smaller than the Great Cormorant, with an orange yellow gular skin which is rounded where it meets the throat plumage.

The next day, Tuesday 12th June 2018, I met one of my Baltimore cousins and we first drove to New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore where many of our relatives are buried. Like Calvary Cemetery in Queens, New York it was a very nice haven for birds and one of the first birds I saw there was another Northern Mockingbird but it looked so different in bright sunlight to the bird I saw in cloudy conditions in Queens.

In the cemetery on the ground there was a Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) and this was a very nice bird to see so close up, and every other one I saw on this trip was soaring in the distance overhead.  There was a very glossy American Crow also on the ground in the cemetery not too far from this vulture and it just looked so small compared to the Turkey Vulture.

After lunch in Baltimore, we then headed to Dundalk in Baltimore which was named after the town of Dundalk in Co. Louth, Ireland.  The centre of this Dundalk town was laid around a nice town park which had American Robins, Common Starlings sunning themselves on the grass, House Sparrows and a new bird for me, the Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscala), and they were hard to photograph as they were always on the move and they had lovely metallic blue black head plumage and I attach a photo of one I managed to photograph a few days later.

Back to American Robins, in Dundalk town park I saw a father feeding a chick under the bushes and I got a nice photo of them both. 

The next day on Wednesday 13th June 2018, my cousin and a friend and I drove to Annapolis to visit the Maryland State Public Records office there to look up some records, and to visit another cousin there.  Annapolis is beautiful and it is also on Chesapeake Bay, like Baltimore, and the US Naval Academy is there.  

After lunch with my Annapolis cousin, we all went for a walk around the Sycamore Point to Horn Point area of Annapolis, and it really was a lovely area beside Annapolis Harbour with lots of yacht marinas beside the sea.  A large bird of prey flew over, and a few minutes later when I looked out at the harbour there was an Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) perched at the end of an old boardwalk in the middle of the estuary.  I had seen Osprey before in Morocco, but they are always an impressive bird to see and I got lovely views of this one.

The next new bird for me was a Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) which I saw seven minutes after the Osprey, sitting on a wire between houses and this was my eight new bird tick on this trip.

We said goodbye and thank you to my Annapolis cousin, and we headed back to Baltimore and I looked forward to the next day of seeing more of my cousins in Baltimore and seeing more new birds.