May 02, 1995|By Bruce Reid | Bruce Reid,Sun Staff Writer
In the shadows of the Sparrows Point steel mills is a rich, urban wilderness -- a place where you can see spring emerging as you stand on a strip of sand strewn with old tires, plastic bottles, broken glass and other debris that has washed ashore.
It's Fort Smallwood Park, lying at the gateway to the Baltimore harbor, where long-winged caspian terns and tiny tree swallows zigzag up the beach. Black-crowned night-herons row the air northward along the tree line. Sharp-shinned hawks glide through the early morning mist and cross the mouth of the Patapsco River on their way to breeding grounds in New England and Canada.
This is the time of year when dozens of bird-watchers flock to the 100-acre, city-owned park at the end of Fort Smallwood Road, in northeastern Anne Arundel County. In spring, it is one of the best spots in the East to see migrating birds of prey -- sometimes as many as 1,400 hawks, falcons and other raptors in a day.
Fort Smallwood is one of several excellent places in or near Baltimore to watch birds: the green lawns and water vistas at Fort McHenry; the wooded enclave of Cylburn Arboretum in North Baltimore; the aromatic environs around the Back River sewage treatment plant in Essex; and the trails around Lake Roland, east of the Jones Falls Expressway near the city's northern border. All of these can introduce people to nature that exists much closer than most of them realize.
"It's just right here and available," said William S. Clark, one of the nation's top raptor experts, who led a group of 25 birders to Fort Smallwood Park recently.
These days Fort Smallwood is a vernal amphitheater, as the flight of raptors, loons, herons and songbirds is in high gear. Ornithologists believe birds have been coming to the site for 3,000 years, which is how long the Chesapeake Bay shoreline has been in its present location. The bay acts as a natural barrier, concentrating migrating birds at Rock Point, the site of the park, especially on days with westerly winds.
Ospreys catch fish nearby. "Kettles" of as many as 100 broad-winged hawks circle overhead on the rising warm air currents. Merlins -- small falcons -- rocket over the treetops and skim the river's surface toward North Point.
"There's a real natural beauty here, with the pond out front and the bay behind you," said Bob Rineer, vice president of the Maryland Ornithological Society and past president of the Baltimore Bird Club.
Decades ago, before the site was attractive to birders, the park was a popular beach and picnic spot. The city bought the park in 1926 from the Army, which built fortifications there in 1896 and named the site in honor of Gen. William Smallwood, a Revolutionary War hero and former governor of Maryland.
On warm days, hundreds of people still come to the park. Pounding bass beats of car radios can be heard by the birders, who occupy a secluded strip of beach.
"Urban birding can be very effective, in that things tend to concentrate" in isolated slices of green, said Rick Blom of Bel Air. He is a columnist for Bird Watcher's Digest, a national magazine, and one of the chief authors of the National Geographic Society's "Field Guide to the Birds of North America."
The official record of birds recorded in Maryland shows that 331 species have been seen in Baltimore and Baltimore County, which are lumped together by the Maryland Ornithological Society, a private group. Only one other Maryland jurisdiction, Worcester County on the Eastern Shore, has recorded more: 364 species.
Urban birding is not new. In 1879, Dr. Elliott Coves, an Army surgeon, compiled a list of about 240 bird species he saw on and around Fort McHenry.
In his acclaimed 1947 book, "Spring in Washington," Louis J. Halle, a former State Department official, chronicled the little-seen birds and other wildlife in and around the capital city during World War II. The book was reprinted in paperback in 1988 by Johns Hopkins University Press.
Mr. Halle spent his days observing birds among the busy city streets and concrete monuments, often while riding his bicycle to "snatch the passing moment and examine it for signs of eternity."
Mr. Rineer, a facilities manager at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, also keeps track of the birds he sees at work. He recently recorded the 62nd species -- a palm warbler -- he has seen from his office window in East Baltimore or walking around the Hopkins hospital.
Hal Wierenga of Arnold, one of Maryland's best-known birders, said it is "shameful" that Fort Smallwood Park, with its water views and tall pines, is "basically neglected" by the city.
Despite the park's condition, the bird life is too rich to pass up, he and others said.
"The show that we go there for is overhead," said Mr. Wierenga, who was one of the first to recognize the park's bird life in the late 1970s.
On April 22, Mr. Rineer, Sue Ricciardi, a math professor at Anne Arundel Community College, and Cal Orvis, a welder from Eastpoint, saw the 218th species recorded at Fort Smallwood -- a swallow-tailed kite.
The kite's breeding range is the coastal plains of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, but individual birds have been known to stray much farther north in spring. The graceful bird seems to glide endlessly. It snatches insects, snakes or young birds from their nests, often eating its prey on the wing, and it skims water to drink like a swallow.
With a 50-inch wingspan and a long, deeply forked tail, the black-and-white raptor has never been seen at the park or in Anne Arundel County. Only 18 other confirmed sightings of the species have been recorded for Maryland in the 116 years that records have been kept by the ornithological society.
