North Carolina's Albemarle Peninsula and Outer Banks make up a world-class birding destination in mid-winter, with waterfowl galore, and a healthy diversity of waders, shorebirds and sparrows.
I had the honor of leading field trips 'Down East' (as it's called) in back-to-back weekends. Trip 1: Duke Conservation Society / Nicholas School Naturalists / Student Association of Wetland Scientists trip to MattamuskeetNational Wildlife Refuge
A couple weeks ago Jeff Pippen and I took a group of 21 master's students from the Nicholas School down to Lake Mattamuskeetfor an unseasonably warm and sunny day of birding.
Lots of happy students
Bird highlights were a Eurasian Wigeon (thanks to Thierry Besancon, who we bumped into with a group from New Hope Audubon), a brief, but diagnostic glimpse of an Ashe-throated Flycatcher (the second one I have found in NC in as many months) and a very photogenic Anhinga.
Anhinga
I used this opportunity to swap SD cards and batteries for the cameras at my research site...
photo by Emma Hedman
Trip 2: Carolina Bird Club Winter Meeting at Nags Head, NC
This past weekend the Carolina Bird Club held its winter meeting at Nags Head, a launching point for a heap of the state's top birding hotspots. I led 3 half-day trips around Bodie Island over Friday and Saturday.
The Bodie Lighthouse pond is the best place I know to get close enough to photograph (or in this case digiscope) ducks...
Northern Pintail and Northern Shoveler
sleepy Gadwall pair
American Avocets, Green-winged Teal and Northern Pintail
Oregon Inlet always has something interesting going on bird-wise. This weekend the highlight for many of the birders on my trips were a pair of Purple Sandpipers at the end of the jetty.
Purple Sandpipers
On the way back west I dropped by the 'sparrow fields' by Lake Phelps. The hotspot lived up to its name and the adjacent shrub line was loaded with oddball sparrows that are usually pretty hard to come by in North Carolina...
When I was trying to come up with a Christmas wish list I jokingly included a couple birds I wanted to see: Evening Grosbeak and Golden Eagle.
No luck yet on the grosbeak, but I've crossed paths with a Golden Eagle twice since making the list!
Golden Eagle, Hyde County, NC
Both were in the Lake Mattamuskeet area, but this distant one I found and photographed down in the Gull Rock Game Land territory on the Mattamuskeet Christmas Bird Count.
And the previous day Ed Corey, Kyle Kittelberger and I were able to chase down this Lapland Longspur that Jeff Lewis found on the beach during the Bodie/Pea Christmas Bird Count.
Lapland Longspur, Dare County, NC
Lapland Longspur
And then during the Alligator River Count, we dipped over to Wanchese to see this Eared Grebe that Edmund LeGrande had found sitting right in the harbor.
Eared Grebe, Wanchese, NC
Eared Grebe
Horned and Pied-billed Grebes were in the same area for nice comparisons.
Eared Grebe and Pied-billed Grebe
Together over the course of 4 days and 4 Christmas Bird Counts we saw about 158 species. Not a bad haul!
My best bird, however, was a Black Rail that I flushed in the marshes in the Gull Rock Game Land. It was one of those lightning-strike birding moments, when you're just at the right place at the right time. I wasn't expecting to cross paths with a Black Rail here (and this was the first I've ever seen), but fortunately in my brief view I was able to see white on the bird's back. That field mark plus it's behavior, like a mouse with feathers and wings, left me without a doubt about its identity.
It was in a narrow strip of marsh bordered by the sound on one side and a channel on the other, so I gathered up the others in my party (6 people total) hoping that if we walked in a line through this area we might be able to flush it into the open. But these attempts failed. And we got no response to tapes when we returned at dusk hoping to hear it call.
I found out later at the Mattamuskeet countdown dinner that John Fussell had surveyed this marsh for Black Rails for years and never found a one.
This is one of those rare birds that birders hate to report. There's no hard evidence and, in this case, not even any fellow witnesses. Reviewing parties will be skeptical (as they should be) and it may not make it into the Christmas Bird Count records even though I submitted a detailed report (it would be a new species for the Mattamskeet CBC, I think). Frequent reports like this, especially if they aren't accepted and made into "records," are liable to earn one a reputation as a "loose canon."
That's why digital cameras have become almost obligatory for birders and why so many people avoid reporting rare birds altogether.
Now if I can just find an Evening Grosbeak this winter...is it too much to ask for one that will pose for a photo?
Last weekend I was down in Dare County, NC with Jeff Pippen and a group of Duke graduate students when we saw this bird in the pond at the Bodie Island lighthouse.
Definitely a large rail...either a King or a Clapper, but which one? If watch the video with your volume up, you can hear us trying to figure it out.
Of course the harsh back-light makes the bird look like a silhouette in the video, but through binoculars field marks were discernible. And with heavy cropping and brightness enhancement, they even come out in the photos.
Jeff and I called this bird a King Rail in the field because of the rusty orange on the chest and neck.
But the more I have shared these photos, the more different reactions I have received.
Both Clapper and King rails are known to inhabit brackish marshes, so the habitat may not be much help in sorting out the ID. And there are plenty of records on ebird for both species at this very pond.
So I'm curious as to what YOU would call this bird if you saw it at this spot and why. A King Rail? A Clapper Rail? A 'Cling Rail?'*
Please post your opinions in the comments below or email them to me (scott dot winton at gmail dot com). Hopefully we can all learn something!
*If you would call it a 'Cling Rail,' please be specific about what you mean. The term 'Cling Rail' gets used in two ways: 1) To refer to rails that we can't ID beyond Clapper/King because we don't have enough information (essentially, 'I can't tell from your crappy photos'); and 2) to refer to Clapper X King hybrids, which have been documented along the Gulf Coast, though I'm not sure how well we understand the frequency and extent of hybridization.
