Who Could Ask For Anything More?

With 2012 being the 75^th anniversary of the Carolina Bird Club, they’ve decided to do something different this year. I, along with several other younger generation birders (read: under 30) were asked to lead trips for their meeting in Southport, a small waterfront town in southeastern North Carolina. With all the great birds one can find on the coast, how could I possibly refuse such an invitation?

Friday started out with a bang. With my first trip located at Carolina Beach, sunrise found me riding the ferry across the Cape Fear River. The sun began to break through the clouds as several hundred White Ibis shot across our bow, while tens of thousands of Double-crested Cormorant streamed from a small roosting island. The sunlight wouldn’t stick around forever though – the forecast called for showers, so we had to bird quickly if we wanted to stay dry.

By the time we reached our first stop, the clouds had rolled in and the horizon was lined with fog. The strong winds brought in six-foot tall waves crashing against the rocks next to our sea-watching gazebo, but that only made it perfect for sea ducks. Several large flocks of Bufflehead struggled against the waves, looking like swarms of blackflies caught in a tempest. More graceful, however, were the Black Scoters that seemed to relish the surf, diving every time a wave rolled in. We were able to see all possible plumages in one flock, including males with their gaudy neon bills, drab-plumaged females, and a single immature male whose bill shown a muted lemon-yellow. As I scanned the flocks, I came across a pair of white sea-ducks near the Bufflehead. Immediately I tried to get my tourees on them – they were Long-tailed Ducks, a pretty good bird this far south. One tall wave later, the ducks dove and disappeared, and I never saw them again that day. Oh well, at least the Black Scoters remained photogenic.

I would apologize for the quality, but it was raining while I took this shot, so... not bad!

We saw other good birds that day, but the awful weather made photography difficult. Saturday, however, had different plans, and the ferry ride over to Carolina Beach lay cast in the orange-pink sunrise. Today, the cormorants refused to put on their show, but the Snowy Egrets and Tricolored Herons flying across the water proved more than compensation. We decided to check out the gazebo for yesterday’s sea ducks, but the Long-taileds had long since departed. Luckily, our scoter flock remained, and our Blacks from yesterday were joined by a nice White-winged and a rather drab Surf Scoter this morning.

After we had our fill of ducks, our group headed back towards the parking lot. We were about to be on our way, when I received a tip: check out the trees near the statue, you might find something good. As we drove past a tall bush, I spotted a thick-looking bird atop one of its snarled branches. We piled out of the cars, and much to our surprise, the bird was making a mechanical call, like something out of a Star Wars movie. I’ve never heard a Loggerhead Shrike vocalize before, but boy was it weird! Without warning, the bird alighted from its perch to the shrubs across the road, but the noise continued. As if answering my question, a second shrike popped up on top of the bush, and started calling out to its lost compatriot.

The term 'Butcher Bird' doesn't have the same meaning after I saw
Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York... I mean, he's the Butcher!

Keeping to our itinerary, we headed off to visit some staked out Great Comorants, an uncommon bird in North Carolina, but not difficult to find if you know where to look. While many in the group enjoyed their life-looks at the pair, I received a text from trip lead Mike McCloy – he’d just seen Common Goldeneyes back at Fort Fisher, and as that would be a lifer for even more people, we headed out. Unfortunately, once we arrived, the heat haze made it impossible to see any birds, and we were left without these awesome ducks. Luckily, Mike had given me another tip: head out to some reeds and try a little playback. Not a second later, we had a bird pop up and start inching towards us. Mostly it stayed hidden, but after a couple minutes it landed in a bush not feet from a dozen watching birders: a Sedge Wren, pretty much the most cooperative I’ve ever seen!

I got a better pic in the light... but of course it managed to magick a stick in front of its face!

We spent a little too much time with the Sedge Wren, so we had to head out for the ferry back home in a timely matter. Usually this means the standard collection of water birds, but today some of the more, um, rural members of our ferry decided to feed the birds off the back of the boat. While they tossed up old bread crusts and bits of potato chips, gulls flocked off our stern to catch what was thrown to them. Not to be outdone, several Boat-tailed Grackles took up posts along the railings to scavenge whatever the gulls missed, and in their intense vigil they apparently forgot that they stood mere feet from humans. Which worked out in my favor, because the light happened to be pretty much perfect at that time of day, and the lattice structure of the grackles’ feathers reflected into beautiful iridescence.

I urge you to zoom in - you can totally see the capillaries in its eyes, it was that close!

Though the grackles and gulls gave me views of maybe three feet, nothing could beat the spectacular birds I’d seen at this CBC meeting. Even after all that, my weekend was only half over, and I still had Sunday to chase a bunch of rare birds. But I got shrikes, I got scoters, I got Sedge Wren… who could ask for anything more?

Damn Nature, You Scary!

WARNING!!!!! Graphic nature images to follow!

This winter, for reasons unbeknownst to me, I’ve been exceptionally good at finding Fox Sparrows. It’s not like I ever find them in any numbers – one here, a second there, and that’s it. But for several weeks in December, it seemed like every birding site James and I visited had at least a Fox Sparrow or two, but it wasn’t always easy to find them. Sometimes I’d spy one at the very top of a tree acting like a finch, and sometimes one would skulk in the undergrowth like a towhee. But no matter what, we would always find them.

This one we found at Mason Farm is totally unrelated to the later bird, but it really illustrates my point.

The Durham Christmas Bird Count proved no different. After we’d scoured the mudflats near the mouth of Ellerbe Creek on Falls Lake, James and I found ourselves following the railroad tracks and checking the tree-line for additional species. Suddenly, I saw a large passerine flush from our left, landing in the gravel on the near side of the tracks. At first I thought it was a female Northern Cardinal – it was about the right size, and I caught a glimpse of rufous as it passed. Upon sighting the bird in my binoculars, however, I immediately recognized it as yet another Fox Sparrow.

Hum dee dum dumm... just a Fox Sparrow minding my own business...

James started sidling up to the bird. Hunkered down near some pine straw, it appeared the bird thought itself well-camouflaged, and it refused to move even as James inched closer. Eventually, James stood no more than ten feet away from it, a feat I’ve never seen a Fox Sparrow repeat in my entire birding career. This bird must be acclimated to humans or something, perhaps used to the fishermen that walk the tracks on their way to catch a carp or two. Then, as James stood over it, the Fox Sparrow turned its head.

OH MY GOD! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR FACE?!?!?!

That’s why the Fox Sparrow didn’t move as James got closer. Not that it didn’t care, or that it chose to ignore him, but that the sparrow literally couldn’t see James coming from the left side of its body. Its eye lay dangling out of its socket, probably the result of a failed attack, perhaps by a fox or a Cooper’s Hawk. Looking at this picture, I wonder if the optic nerve remained connected, but I can’t imagine how debilitating this must be for the bird. Eventually, the Fox Sparrow turned its head so its good eye was facing James, and upon noticing the encroaching human, flew off for the safety of the bushes.

Nothin' to see here folks... nope, no hanging eye-ball or anything...

Of all the Fox Sparrows in all the world, we got to see the one that couldn’t see us, an incredible feat of survival in the one-eyed face of adversity. I may never again get this close to one of these birds, and if this is what it takes for Fox Sparrow proximity, I may never want to. I don’t often get grossed out by this kind of thing, but I almost couldn’t handle this bird… because, damn nature. You scary.

Death of a Nemesis

The Nemesis Bird is a bird that, for whatever reason, you haven’t seen despite repeated efforts, to the point where it’s almost an embarrassing miss on your life list. There are actually two kinds of such nemeses: there’s the bird that you go out to find, in the right habitat, at the right time of year, and you just can’t seem to kick up. Then there’s the more infuriating type, a bird that you’ve been close to, and you know this because you can hear it in the trees just across the road, or the reeds on the other side of the marsh; yet it doesn’t present itself. This is the latter. Or, should I say, it was the latter.

I’m not saying I hear Eastern Screech-Owls all that often; in fact I can count the number of heard screeches on one hand. There’s the first one, the one I heard calling its tremelo deep in the woods near Jordan Lake one October. Then there’s the bird I heard at Lake Mattamuskeet, and another at Falls Lake (an unintentional pattern; perhaps birders just frequent lakes). Finally, just this past December, James and I heard one calling, yet again near Lake Mattamuskeet. I know owls aren’t easy, but after four times I should have seen one already, right?! That’s when I got the text from Mark. He’d seen one the previous day, roosting in an old knot on the same snag he’d had one last year, and it should be back this morning. I was out the door before the reply text finished sending.

The owl was being seen on private property in Fearrington Village, a subdivision outside of Pittsboro. As a kid, I’d head out there to check out their famous Belties, an ice-cream sandwich breed of cow – chocolate black on both ends, vanilla white in the middle. But today, we whipped past the cow pastures, even ignoring large flocks of blackbirds, Blue Jays, and robins. We had a mission. Pulling into the drive, Mark looked behind him – “It’s here!” he exclaimed, and he pulled a three-point turn so the bird would be on my side of the car. Sure enough, as we inched forward to the forked snag missing patches of bark, I could see a small owl that would have been totally invisible to me if I hadn’t been told exactly where to look.

Check out that look on his face:
"Hey, can a guy not sleep off his hangover in peace?! I mean, DAMN!"

Most east-coast screech-owls look a gaudy shade of rusty red, and are relatively easy to pick out in dead trees. I’m told it doesn’t matter to the owls because most birds are incapable of seeing color, and so the screech-owls appear perfectly camouflaged. This bird, however, was the far more uncommon gray-morph, and its camouflage is uncanny, even to my color-enabled eyes – the bird seems to melt right into the tree, its breast pattern identical to bark covered with a little lichen. That didn’t stop the Eastern Screech-Owl from having a backup plan, and as soon as we looked away for a second the bird dove deep into its chosen hole, never to be seen again.

We went back by his little snag later in the day, but he preferred to stay hidden. Not that it mattered, I had my bird and one more nemesis became nothing but a tick on my life list. I remember when I was still looking for my lifer Eastern Screech-Owl, I found myself longing for a red-morph bird. But man, after having had this amazing experience, how could I possibly complain?

#48: Yellow-crowned Night Heron - San Diego River, CA

In San Diego, pretty much every bird I saw was a lifer for me, including some birds I never thought I’d see. However, only two of the birds I found could be considered rare for the area, but there’s a problem – birds that are rare for San Diego are unfortunately common on the East Coast. One was an American Oystercatcher I found roosting at the Cabrillo Tide Pools, an area where Black Oystercatchers are far more common (never did find a Black, grrr). This is the other.

James and I pulled up to the San Diego River to find shorebirds swarming over the flats that formed in the low tide. Short-billed Dowitchers probed the mud while my lifer Marbled Godwits raced back and forth, occasionally dipping their heads for a bite. Upriver a couple hundred feet, we could see a large flock of Elegant Terns lounging around with a couple Caspians. We started walking down the bank to get a little closer, when I noticed a small gray wader on the close shore. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but raising my binocs, I found myself looking at a Yellow-crowned Night Heron, a bird that’s not supposed to be here, and a lifer for James!

They may be rare in San Diego, but they breed every year in suburban Durham county!

Later, I learned that these night herons are part of a small colony that has only recently begun to colonize southern California. They’re still rare, but with enough time and effort you can certainly find some. Apparently they’ve taken to nesting in the nearby Sea World, so perhaps they’ll stick around for some time. Either way, it’s certainly the most cooperative Yellow-crowned Night Heron I’ve ever seen, and to this day, it remains the bird I recollect when I look at its tick on my life list.

The Prequel

Although the Dovekie James and I found was by far the highlight of our trip up the Outer Banks, we certainly had our fair share of awesome birds beforehand. The first day started out slowly – before we even crossed the Pamlico, we stopped at Alligator River NWR to try and find the previously reported Golden Eagle. No dice, I’m afraid, and the strong winds kept most of the waterfowl far out and hunkered down. Not much to do at this point but continue on our journey.

We decided our next stop would be Bodie Lighthouse to check out the ducks. James especially was hoping for a lifer that should have come his way by now, and sure enough out among the swans were hundreds of Green-winged Teal. It’s a species we’d magnificently missed seeing this winter, but the teals at Bodie stayed too far abreast to photograph. On our way out of the parking lot, however, we spotted a couple Eastern Meadowlarks foraging under some nearby pines. Normally meadowlarks flush at the first sign of a birder, or even a birder’s vehicle, but by using the car as a blind we were able to watch these pudgy blackbirds feast to their heart’s content.

Meadowlarks are ungainly, waddling birds... but they sure are pretty!

Just as we were leaving the parking lot, we ran into a pair of birders who’d just been to our next destination, Pea Island’s North Pond. The water level’s down, they said, so there aren’t any ducks, but we did find the bittern. Bingo! Last time we were at North Pond, we missed the accommodating American Bittern that likes to hang out at the turtle pond there, probably because of the insane winds. But today, even the winds couldn’t keep him down. We raced over, walked towards the boardwalk and… he was gone. No bittern once again. Disappointed, we walked a little further to find North Pond nothing but a huge sand flat, when a birder alerted that the bittern was in fact present. Quickly, we noted that tucked away in a little cove, invisible from almost every angle, the American Bittern hunkered against the howling gusts. We were able to flank him and watch him at point-blank range. As we did so, in typical bittern fashion, he scarcely moved a muscle.

"The birder's visual acuity is based on movement, like a T. rex - they can't see me if I don't move!"

The sun began to set, so we retired for the night. The next morning, we awoke to a glassy Pamlico Sound, and we knew the winds that plagued us the day before had diminished to barely a whisper. We hit up Bodie Island again to find all the ducks much closer than they had been, and the Green-winged Teal began to stir from their peaceful roosts and started foraging near the observation deck. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a raptor zooming across the nearby field of reeds – a “gray ghost”, a beautiful male Northern Harrier. The ducks paid him little attention, so he flew off into the sunrise, but man; what a bird! Walking along the boardwalk one last time, I heard the chatter of Sedge and Marsh Wrens, but none would perch upon the reeds for us. Too bad; we had places to go and birds to see.

I looked through all these ducks for a Eurasian Wigeon or a Common Teal... no luck!

Not a mile down the road, we pulled into the Oregon Inlet Marina, that random little spot where James got his lifer Red-necked Grebe on the Christmas Bird Count. Hoping for a good assemblage of sea ducks, we instead found the waters of the sound looked much like North Pond – one big sand flat, filled with shorebirds, egrets, and ibises. Instead, we focused our attention on the loons that would surface quite close to us inside the marina itself. James was attempting to photograph one when he spotted another American Bittern, our second for the trip! As he approached it, the bittern flew off to a small mud bank on the far shore, away from meddling humans. James was checking out the bittern’s new hiding spot when he noticed a second bird making its way along the bank, and he yelled out with excitement – “Rail!”

No, it's okay, you can stand there preening for like five minutes. I don't mind.

Quickly, I swiveled my scope around, and sure enough a beautiful Clapper Rail foraged out in the open, not a yard from the statuesque bittern. The rail ran up and down, and around the bittern, pausing every so often to probe its beak into the soft mud. It’s the most active Clapper Rail I’ve ever seen (granted, I’ve only seen one other), but it seemed so focused on its early morning hunting that it didn’t bother noticing James sneaking up behind the dock pylons to snap the shot you see above. After drinking in his lifer Clapper Rail, James made his way back around towards the car, only to find one of the Common Loons surfacing not twenty feet offshore. James managed to snap this one perfect picture before the loon realized what it had done and dove back underwater to escape the gaze of the watching birders.

That look in his eyes says, "I've made a huge mistake!"

And you know the rest of the story already. After enjoying some great birds at the marina, James and I headed off to the old Coast Guard station at Oregon Inlet, found a struggling Dovekie, and returned it to the sea. Because we were on a time crunch (getting James back to college, etc), we only birded the Outer Banks for a good six or eight hours. But that’s all the time you need to see some great birds at one of the best birding spots in the Carolinas. 

A Bird In The Hand Is Worth A Dovekie In The Bush

As the old saying goes, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. That is, what you have is not worth sacrificing for something that merely could be better. The adage is used as a cautionary tale, but today, as James and I birded the Outer Banks on his way back to William and Mary, I learned that this proverb may, in fact, be totally wrong.

As James and I passed over the Bonner Bridge, we noticed a bunch of cormorants hanging out on a couple of roped pylons just offshore in the placid, glass-like waters of the Pamlico Sound. Scoping them out, I found a Great Cormorant towering over its numerous Double-crested cousins.

“Hey, we should photograph the Great! It’s in pretty good light right now,” I shouted over to James, who was already checking out the mergansers in the small bay.

“No,” he maintained. “I’d rather see what’s out at the end of the jetty.” Fair enough. After yesterday’s strong winds topped 20 mph, I couldn’t refuse a day of sea-watching across a calm Atlantic Ocean scarcely able to create a single white-capped wave.

Walking around the stone wall that lined the bay, James noticed a rustling in the nearby grass. “What do you think it is?” he asked. Several birds called from just inside the chest-height blades.

“I dunno,” I replied. “I hear a Savannah Sparrow and a Towhee in there.” It had to be one of those. Towhees especially are well known for turning over the undergrowth with their legs, looking for food. But because most birds hop around, their rustling often sounds rhythmical, unlike this. This sounded random.

“It sounds like a mammal,” James said. It would make sense. We’d seen some cotton rats recently, and their skittering through fields and briers sounded pretty similar. “I think I can see it,” he continued. “Take a step into the reeds, you should be able to flush it towards me.”

As I advanced, the Savannah Sparrow and Eastern Towhee both flushed past James, landing in the dunes on the other side. I couldn’t locate the source of the sound, but I could definitely hear it again.

“I see it!” James exclaimed. “It’s a… bird?”

“What?”

“Yeah, it’s black and white… like a Razorbill. I’m not sure what it is though!”

As I continued into the tall grass, I finally saw the source of the rustling. Flailing around on the ground in front of me, unable to fly, was an unmistakably tiny Dovekie, a rare little auk scarcely larger than the common Northern Cardinal. Assuming it had a hurt wing, I picked it up so it wouldn’t become food for a feral cat, or some native predator.

I'm probably one of only a few people ever to hold their lifer Dovekie!

James and I rejoiced in our find, and called out to a passing group of birders. They knew the name of a wildlife rehabber we could take the bird to. But one of them came up with an alternative theory.

“You know, it could’ve overshot the ocean with these winds we’ve been having. Maybe it just can’t take off?”

I hadn’t thought of that possibility, but he was right. Like grebes and loons, Dovekies and most other auks have their webbed feet set far back on their body. As obligate divers, a Dovekie’s feet and wings work in perfect synergy, allowing them to swiftly locate and capture prey underwater; however, in order to take off, they have to get a running start before there’s enough air over their wings for flight.

I call this one, "As Close As You Can Get To A Dovekie Without Getting Wet".

I’d been restraining the bird’s wings so it wouldn’t flap and perhaps injure itself further, but upon moving my hand, the Dovekie gave several strong flaps, its wings slapping against my extended arms. The bird certainly seemed healthy, so we cautiously walked over the large rocks that divided the parking lot from the bay, and headed down to the beach.

When I say it's a small bird, I mean it's tiny. At least, compared to me it is!

Surrounded by birders as if it were some kind of ceremony, I carefully placed the Dovekie on the packed sand just a couple feet from the gently lapping waters of the Atlantic. James was going to try and photograph it in situ on the beach, but as soon as I let go my hands, the bird pattered its feet across the sand and seamlessly continued into the ocean before finally alighting. The bird flapped its stubby wings for all their worth and before we could comprehend what happened, the bird had flown around side of the Oregon Inlet jetty and out of sight.

Sure it's blurry, but it remains the only record of my "Free Willy" moment.

After parting ways with the passing birders (who, it turned out, shared pretty much our exact birding agenda for the day), James and I decided to walk the length of the jetty and see if perhaps the Dovekie had decided to grab a quick bite to eat in the breakers off the point. Along the way, I heard an odd sound that made me turn around – but there was nothing. I heard it again – puff! – and this time I could see the dorsal fin of a Bottlenose Dolphin breach the surface not fifty feet away! But not just one – a whole pod of dolphins made its way down the jetty rocks, surfacing to exhale every so often, all of them very close. What a sight to behold!

And it was low tide too! Must've been shallow out there!

Reaching the end of the jetty, we found a whole load of nothing. Apparently, the windless day meant that pelagic birds could spend their time far out at sea, and even the formerly common Northern Gannets were relegated to white specks over a mile offshore. So we turned around, noting more dolphins on the way (can I reiterate, awesome?) but nothing else of note. Once we returned to the parking lot, James noticed the cormorants remained on the pylons, and sure enough the Great Comorant stuck around too. We got our photograph and retreated for the car to plan the rest of our excursion.

Large and in charge.

So, at least today, the old “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” phrase ended up being totally untrue. We had our bird, we left it, and we got a better one. As it turns out, in fact, a bird in the hand is worth exactly one awesome Dovekie.

Woodcock O'clock!

Towards the end of winter, the bird life starts to get tired. The juncos have been here for almost five months, the White-throated Sparrows are finishing off the last of the bird seed, and even the formerly cheerful racket of foraging Ruby-crowned Kinglets has relegated itself to commonplace. Luckily, at this time of year, there’s something you can do to relieve your avian ennui. For some reason, February is the month American Woodcocks have chosen to stop skulking in the deep forest, and begin their elaborate mating displays.

We arrived at Mason Farm earlier than we needed to. Unfortunately for photographers, woodcocks feel the need to display after sundown, and as that wouldn’t occur for another couple hours, James and I decided to walk the loop trail. Bird activity had slowed by the afternoon, but we still found a couple of small flocks. Chickadees and Titmice rasped from the shrubbery near a damp swamp, and a Golden-crowned Kinglet foraged lower in the branches than I’ve ever seen one. But the exciting part came after I heard a reedy whistle coming from a nearby tree. Looking up, I found none other than a Brown Creeper working its way up a trunk quite close to us, and James raced over to snap this shot.

Creepers have to be among the most frustrating birds to photograph!

As the clouds started to move in, even the mixed winter flocks started to disappear. The cool winds couldn’t hide the fact that it was a balmy sixty degrees outside. So as we rounded a turn on the gravel path, I was quite surprised to find a large toad hopping through the tall grass, apparently taking advantage of the unseasonable January weather. Before he could escape into the wilderness, I caught him and placed him on the trail to get a better look – in North Carolina, there are two very similar species, and I had to make sure of its identity. Luckily for us, the toad had single warts ringed by dark skin, meaning he was an American Toad, an amphibian that had escaped James’s camera lens until this point, as the more common and closely related Fowler’s Toad has proved to be more photogenic.

He doesn't look very amused, does he?

Finally, the sun began to set, and we made our way to a stretch of trail that lies between two large fields. It’s a spot I’m told has been historically good for woodcock in the past, and it’s where I got my lifer almost two years ago. Of course, January is still a little early for their breeding displays, and I couldn’t be certain the birds would be out and about so early in the year, but as it's been a mild winter, I liked our chances. As the sun dipped below the horizon, however, I heard an odd sound travel from across the field. weent. That’s it! The Woodcocks were back! Over the course of the next half-hour, more and more American Woodcocks called in the fields, and soon enough they began to take off on their display flights, winnowing over the fields by using specialized feathers on their wings. Suddenly, the winnowing became faster and faster as one bird spiraled towards the ground, and as he neared it became more mechanical before silencing. With naught but a rustle of feathers, a male American Woodcock flew right past us and landed in the middle of the trail.

A much nicer view than nearly stepping on one in the middle of the forest!

We managed to catch him in the spotlight, and as James photographed him, the bird straightened his posture and let out a single weent, hoping to attract a female to his trail-side hovel. He ducked back down, ran a couple feet, flashed his tail feathers, and without warning he’d alighted, once again winnowing over the fields. After just a half hour of watching the birds, the fields fell silent once again. All in all, we must have seen around ten American Woodcocks that night, including a male courting a female down the trail from us. But none gave us quite the views as that one male on a balmy night in January.