Sunday, March 24, To Home

I had a short small incident of diarrhea Saturday night or early Sunday morning.  On the internet, I read about the noro-virus.  It can continue up to 60 hours or almost three days.  However, it is recommended that one eat normally to maintain nutrition.  After packing and leaving the motel, I had fruit and maple oatmeal at McDonalds and got a sausage burrito meal to go with orange juice and a coffee with one cream on the side.   This is a typical breakfast for me when I am on the road.  I decided to try for the Crested Caracara in south Delaware in the Millville area.  Delaware is one of my favorite birding states.  I maintain a life list for Delaware.  Crested Caracara would be a new life bird for Delaware for me as well as a new bird for the year, provided that the Delaware Bird Records Committee accepts it as a wild bird.  This was not far out of the way for me to drive home.  I could afford a few hours to look for this bird.

I arrived in the Millville Area at 11:00 am and found Old Mill Road and White's Neck Road.  The Crested Caracara had been seen on a deer carcass on Old Mill Road on Saturday and sitting in a field along White's Neck road near Ellis Point on Wednesday.  It has also been seen on Irons Lane in the same area.  I drove around the area looking in the fields, scanning the trees and watching the soaring Turkey Vultures in the area looking for the caracara.  At 12:30 pm, I decided to leave and drove White's Neck Road to Old Mill Road.  When I turned the corner on to Old Mill Road, I saw two Turkey Vultures sitting in the field.  It was at the deer carcass, so I pulled off the road opposite the carcass and decided to wait a bit.  More Turkey Vultures came in but not the Crested Caracara.  At 2:00 pm, I left the area and headed toward Cincinnati.  Crested Caracara is easy to get for my year list in south Texas, an area I am headed to very soon.  It is too bad about not getting it on my Delaware state list.  I needed to head west, because snow is predicted for later on Sunday.

Just before dark as I was headed west on I-68 in Garrett County, Maryland near Frostburg, I hit snow.  It was snowing heavily, and the road surface was slushy in spots and getting snow covered.  Google maps wanted me to take an alternate route on Route 40 northwest through the mountains to Uniontown as a shorter route to I-70 west.  I rejected that route and continued on I-68 to I-79 to I-70 west, because I had driven this route many times and knew that the elevation decreased closer to Morgantown, West Virginia.  I had never driven the alternate route and can take the shorter route some other time when it is not snowing and not at night.  I arrived safely in Washington, PA and stayed the night.  The snow decreased after the highest elevations in western Maryland, which are just under 3000 feet on I-68, and stopped before I reached Washington, PA.  Google maps needs a winter time driving feature!