Birds in a Changing World: North Carolina's Serengeti

Up now on the Duke Environment Blog!

Birds in a Changing World: North Carolina's Serengeti

Leadin' field trips down east

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 Mattamuskeet National 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...

Vesper Sparrow

Vesper Sparrows

Vesper Sparrow and Clay-colored Sparrow

More on the Hatteras pelagic...

To give my last post a bit more context, the Black-browed Albatross will be only the fifth formally accepted record of the species for the United States (once the NC records committee gets a chance to vote on it) with 10 or so other unconfirmed reports over the years (source). And it is only the second report of any kind from North Carolina waters with a first being a sight record of two birds seen in the 70s .

Obviously the Black-browed Albatross, for its incredible improbability and stunning beauty, stole the show from what had already been fabulous winter pelagic trip off Hatteras.

The weather was mild and the sea was calm (at least by afternoon). Our first rare bird of the day appeared almost instantly: an Iceland Gull, not 15 minutes out of port in the sound. I had seen a few of these on the pelagic trip I took February last year and got some great photos, so like lack of sunlight and photo opportunity didn't bother me.

Moments later we cruised by a flock of about 60 Brant, a goose species found on salt water that can be elusive within North Carolina (NC bird #302!).

Out on the open ocean we weren't finding the incredible density of alcids that we had last year; one Dovekie skittered away from the boat and I saw small groups of Razorbills here and there. But we found almost all the typical winter pelagic species that I had missed last year including a few Manx Shearwaters (lifer #1546), Great Skuas (lifer #1548), one lone Northern Fulmar (lifer #1549), and several groups of Red Phalaropes.

Red Phalaropes (lifer #1547!); so cool to see shorebirds at home on the open ocean

The phalaropes were working along an obvious contrast between warm blue gulf stream water and cold green water.

more phalaropes with a Bonaparte's Gull; at a distance these two birds can look remarkably similar

The confluence of nutrient-rich cold water and the gulf stream drives a hotspot of primary productivity, attracted fish and other marine macrofauna. Not-birds included Bottlenose and Spotted Dolphins, but most impressive were the abundance of Loggerhead Sea Turtles.

Loggerhead Sea Turtle

We noticed 30 to 40 bobbing past and several that exhibited some really odd behavior...turtles swimming on their backs with flippers out of the water. One even craned its head out of its shell above water and opened its mouth showing its beak. I guess this was some sort of threat display because it proceeded to approach our boat and bite at the hull! Weird. I hope some turtle experts can offer some interpretation.

Black-browed Albatross off Cape Hatteras

Black-browed Albatross; pelagic off Cape Hatteras on Feb.18, 2012

Full Adult; the first adult of the species photographed in the US?

With 1st-cycle Great Black-backed Gull; I wonder how often these species meet?

With Northern Gannets; another unusual juxtaposition!

In flight; notice how close we are to the shoreline in the background. Also note the molting flight feathers.  I have read that albatrosses have to take a year off from nesting to molt.

During the ~45-minute view, it mostly sat on the water. This is the only glimpse of the underwings I captured

Overexposed and cropped photo shows a dark iris; an indication the bird is from the nominate race/subspecies and may be from the Falkland Islands off Argentina (rather than Campbell Island)

My first photo of the bird at 4:40 pm; imagine if it had disappeared after this shot

And the second capture; nice and blurry like most of my pelagic photos

Bob Fogg aboard the Stormy Petrel II (captained by Brian Patteson) with the Albatross in the background.  Bob spotted the bird fly into the wake (apparently they go for chum)

Jeff Pippen taking an iPhone photo of the bird to be sent instantly to his lawyer for safe keeping.  Jeff led a group from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University that fortunately included me!

And in case anybody wants to see some HD video (be sure to watch in 720p!):

Sorry about the shakiness, the boat just wouldn't hold still.  This clip is better for shake than many of the others I took (too much zoom), but just to be safe, you may want to pop some dramamine. 

Huge thanks to Captain Brian, 1st mate Kate and spotters Bob and Dave for a fantastic trip.  It was a phenomenal day even discounting this bird (lifer #1550 and my 5th of the day!).

For more on the context of this find and details about other cool birds and non-birds seen on the trip, check out my follow-up post.

A gorgeous morning of birds in SWAMP

I led a group of students from the Duke Student Association of Wetland Scientists (SAWS), Nicnats and the Duke Natural History Society (DNHS) out on bird walk in SWAMP yesterday.

Awesome people (from left Kai, Katie, Tong, Paul)

The weather and leaves were equally gorgeous and birds seemed especially active as if wanting to make the most of the warmth and sun.  Every dense patch of grass and bushes seemed to be saturated with calling sparrows.  The resident Red-shouldered Hawk cooperatively posed for photos by the dam.  

Fall SWAMP count with SAWS

A whopping 14 masters students woke up early last Saturday morning and came out to tag along for a bird count with me in the Duke University Wetland Center (DUWC) Stream and Wetland Assessment and Management Park (SWAMP).  This shows that bird watching is exploding in popularity!  That, or that graduate students will do just about anything for free donuts and coffee, which were graciously provided by the Student Association of Wetland Scientists (SAWS) Duke Chapter.  But probably the real draw was celebrity leader Jeff Pippen who took time out of his busy schedule of finding rare seabirds in Durham to educate us all about everything natural that was to be found.

Jeff Pippen distilling wisdom in SWAMP

The Al Buehler fitness trail runs right through the SWAMP site and gets lots of traffic.  During our count we happened to be sharing space with an actual collegiate cross-country meet.  Obviously this isn’t the most conducive setting for birds and birding and we weren’t able to find any exciting fall migrants. 

A Belted Kingfisher at the pond was a crowd-pleaser.  But the best wetland bird came after everyone had left and I stole off on my own to count one final section of the site that is inaccessible to the public.  At a small vernal pool I stumbled upon a very agitated Green Heron that kept flaring its crown feathers, croaking and flicking its tail.

Green Heron

Here's a video of the tail-flicking part:

I was happy to see the Green Heron, but I think it was upset I hadn’t brought the others.  Even if the birds weren’t spectacular, it was a gorgeous morning and nice to show the restoration areas and new board walks and platforms to the group.  For me it was also more data for my bird study and I learned some new wetland plant species from Jeff.

Check out that Dodo!

 A big thanks to Jeff and all the SAWS participants for making such a great day!

My first trip to Hatteras

I tagged along with Jeff Pippen and 9 Nicnats (What's a Nicnat?) for my first ever trip to Cape Hatteras and my first North American pelagic birding trip.

We saw a Great Horned Owl fly across highway 64 around dusk on the ride down, which made the state list significance of my recent birding in Charlotte all the less.

So far so good.

Saturday morning we were up before dawn to meet Brian Patteson at the dock. We had tallied six gull species before even leaving the sound (the four you would expect plus Laughing and Lesser Black-backed). I knew our next gull would be a lifer for me.

I have a bad habit of whispering bird sightings rather than calling them out. And I mumbled to nobody in particular “hey check out this white gull…” Luckily Jeff was there to shout “ICELAND GULL!!!”

It turned out that there was really no need for urgency as there was almost always an Iceland Gull following the boat throughout the day and we saw four or five individuals.

Photographing a moving bird from a moving boat is not an art form I have perfected, so I took this video for those willing to brave the motion sickness.

Unfortunately there were no 8^th, 9^th, 10^th or 11^th gull species on the trip. We did see plenty of alcids including Razorbills (you’ll have to use your imagination) and Dovekies (you’ll have to imagine even harder as I didn’t get any pictures at all).

A steady wind kept us from getting out to the gulf stream, which was a real bummer. We missed a lot of reliable pelagic species: no Red Phalarope, Great Skua or shearwaters of any kind.

I did get three lifers out of the bargain (both alcids and the white gull), and I got to see my first breaching humpback whale (!), so I really can’t complain. I sure left myself with plenty of reasons to return for another voyage.

Sunday we started out birding Cape Point hoping for Western Grebes, rare gulls and Snow Buntings. Despite some generous help from Neal and his four-wheel drive vehicle we struck out on those targets. I later heard that others had found the Snow Buntings as well as Black-headed and Glaucous Gulls...so add those to my list of potential life and state birds missed on the trip. A consolation was a lone female Common Goldeneye at the pond which was NC bird #247 for me.

We birded our way up the banks through several spots over the next few hours seeing all sorts of ducks and shorebirds including a few dozen American Avocets at the Bodie Lighthouse pond. We also got some great looks at a cooperative Merlin in South Bodie.

No crazy rail sightings though. It seems like everybody has a ridiculous rail story for that spot.

We ended the day and our trip at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, which I had driven past several times but never visited. What a place!

Jeff Pippen was able to pick out a distant circling adult Swainson’s Hawk, which I was able to view for several minutes through my scope. Life bird #1458 (thanks Jeff!).

Jeff pretended to get lost on the network of gravel roads when he was really just setting us up for a dusk sighting of a Bobcat! No pictures unfortunately, but this was my first ever sighting of a non-captive non-domestic real wild cat.

On the whole it was a really fun trip. When the birding was slow, the group was there to pick up the slack. I’m already looking forward to next year!

Special thanks to Neal Moore for shuttling us all around Cape Point Sunday am, to Paul Chad for assisting Nicnats with funding and to Jeff Pippen for being a badass trip leader.