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Prairie Boy Does Durham, NC (long)
- To: <Carolinabirds@duke.edu>
- Subject: Prairie Boy Does Durham, NC (long)
- From: "Sandy Ayer" <hdayer@cbccts.sk.ca>
- Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 14:10:32 -0600
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
I thought some of y'all might be interested in a Canadian's account of
birding the Durham area, and especially since your own Will Cook figures
prominently.
Prairie Boy Does Durham, NC
"It certainly looks like an avian wasteland," I muttered as I scanned the
range maps in my field guide with Durham, NC in mind. I was planning to
spend 6 days there, along with fellow birders Eric Friede (from New Haven,
CT) and Lynn Berg (from New Brunswick, NJ), at the annual conference of
the American Theological Library Association (ATLA), and the conference
schedule was such that we'd have a couple of mornings of birding
together.
After scanning the excellent weekly checklist of the Chapel Hill (a city
just south of Durham) Bird Club, I found only a handful of life bird
possibilities. Mind you, most of these were nemesis birds of a sort: I'd
missed Kentucky Warbler a few years back at Great Falls, Va., (also during
an ATLA conference), and had heard and almost seen one in May at Pt.
Pelee; I'd missed Whippoorwill this year at both Pt. Pelee and in my
native Regina (it showed up as a vagrant for a couple of hours one
evening); and I'd had had a couple of almost-sightings of Fish Crow during
the aforementioned trip to Virginia. Brown-headed Nuthatch, the only
ABA-area nuthatch I've yet to see, rounded off the list. Via Birdchat, I
got in touch with Will Cook, a biologist at Duke University (and compiler
of the above-mentioned checklist) who graciously offered to take us to
some local hotspots on the 21st and 23rd of June.
We rendez-voused with Will at the gate to Mason Farm near Chapel Hill.
"This place looks like a rainforest!" I remarked on seeing the lushness of
the vegetation. For me, at least, it was the first experience of a
Carolinian forest in Carolina. Will's love of nature and his expertise as
a birder became apparent from the moment he began to call out the names of
the vocalizing birds: "Red-shouldered Hawk, Blue Grosbeak, Indigo Bunting,
White-eyed Vireo, . . . ." Stopping at the bushes from which the latter
was calling, he gave a convincing Screech Owl imitation that brought the
bird out into plain view.
"Common White-tail," he called out a little while later, but it wasn't a
bird or a deer he was referring to (there were also plenty of the latter
in the area) but a dragonfly perched on a nearby log. The next one we
encountered stumped him; he wasn't up on his dragonflies, he confessed.
Butterflies were another matter: "American Lady-and that's a Little Wood
Satyr." Further along the trail he also helped us distinguish the birdlike
vocalizations of tree frogs from the real avian thing.
"Acadian Flycatcher, Carolina Wren, and there's a KENTUCKY Warbler singing
in the background, let's go in after it!" Following his lead we left the
trail, bushwhacking our way through hurricane-strewn trunks and branches,
to near where the sound had originated. I was having a hard time distinguis
hing the warbler's song from that of the wren, but finally got the
difference in tone and cadence down.
After hearing no vocalizations for a couple of minutes, we concluded that
our target must have flown off. "Maybe we would've been better to stick to
the trail," Will mused. Then the singing began again, and Will spotted the
bird singing on an exposed branch about 10 meters away and about 4 or 5
meters off the ground: "They sometimes sing from as high as 20 feet up."
We all got great looks at its head, though it flew off before we could see
the whole bird in profile. Everything else, including an Eastern Bluebird,
a Brown Thrasher, a Red-bellied Woodpecker, and a deer that dashed across
the path directly behind another group of birders, was gravy.
We had an hour or two left, and Will suggested we try for either Yellow-cro
wned Night-Heron and Red-headed Woodpecker or Fish Crow and Brown-headed
Nuthatch. Realizing that we'd have a chance at the latter two on Saturday
morning we opted for the former, since the Night Heron was another
potential lifer for me, and since the woodpecker is always a delight to
see.
We drove to a waterfowl impoundment about a mile north of the junction of
Old Mason Farm Road and Highway 15-501. The Red-headed Woodpeckers were
there-four in all, including two juveniles-as were Great Egrets, Great
Blue Herons, and a Green Heron. But scan as we might, we couldn't find a
trace of the Night-Heron. We decided to head back, because it was getting
on for 10:00 a.m. and our next conference session began at 11:00. Just
then a crow perched atop a snag (i.e., a standing dead limbless tree
trunk) went "cah-cah" and, unexpectedly, I had my life FISH CROW. Which
was just as well because, as it turned out, the bird was a no-show at
Jordan Lake on Saturday morning.
I woke up the next day with a sore throat. "Oh no, not a cold!" I groaned.
But then I realized it had come from the Screech Owl imitations I'd been
practicing during my roommate's absences the day before. That night Eric,
Lynn, and I returned to the waterfowl impoundment at dusk, figuring we'd
have a better shot at the mostly crepuscular Night-Heron. The sky was
heavy and overcast in the aftermath of a thunderstorm, and the smell of
smoke alerted us to the fact that one of the many snags in the impoundment
had recently been struck by lightning. That, and the decreasing interval
between lightning flashes and thunderclaps (combined with my wife's recent
admonitions about messing with lightning), made me quite uneasy, and so
the three of us stayed just long enough for a quick scan of the shoreline,
netting only Belted Kingfisher for our trip list. We then headed for the
Whippoorwill hotspot Will had pointed out to us that morning, but the trip
was rendered fruitless by driving rain. Frustrated, though in good
spirits, we headed back to our hotel. In the parking lot we heard a Common
Nighthawk, a pretty good bird for these parts, as we later learned from
Will.
Somehow, despite a power outage during the night, all three of us managed
to wake up in time for a 4:15 a.m. departure for a 5:00 a.m. rendez-vous
with Will in Wilsonville, which lies due south of Durham. Will had invited
us to join him for a breeding bird survey on the west side of Jordan Lake
near Pittsboro. After picking picking him up and piling into Lynn's rented
car, we made our way to the first stop. On the way, we spooked a medium-siz
ed owl perched by the roadside, which we concluded (by the process of
elimination) could only have been a Barred Owl.
The survey consisted of 20 stops along a pre-determined route at half-mile
intervals. At each we were to close the car doors gently, so as not to
wake farm dogs, and spend three minutes recording whatever birds we could
hear or see. At one of the first stops we heard the loud, unmistakable
call of a WHIPPOORWILL, which was followed a few stops later by that of a
Chuck-Will's-Widow, giving the three of us a caprimulgid triple-header for
the trip.
Other significant birds that we saw or heard included Summer Tanager,
Hairy Woodpecker, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Cooper's Hawk, and Scarlet
Tanager. I missed a couple of the sightings, since I was the scribe and
the keeper of the timer (it had to be paused every time a passing truck
prevented us from hearing bird vocalizations), but I had fun birding by
ear, and especially at one point when a Chipping Sparrow and a Pine
Warbler each sang within seconds of one another. I got so that I could
tell the richer song of the warbler from its more staccato sparrow
counterpart. Which may come in handy one day, because I'd like to see a
Pine Warbler in Saskatchewan. Our very small breeding population (in the
southeastern part of the province) is poorly known because of the
difficulty in distinguishing its song from that of the abundant Chipping
Sparrow.
Our route necessitated stops at odd locations (which generated odd looks
from the locals) along the narrow country road we were following. Once,
the driver of a passing pickup asked if we were broken down; on another
occasion, while we were parked in the driveway of a local dairy, a
Mexican-American security guard, mistaking our binoculars for cameras,
admonished us not to take photos; and near the end of our route a burly,
surly, early (7:00 a.m.) denizen of a barbershop hailed us with a menacing
"S'appenin'?" He rolled his eyes in disgust and disbelief when I responded
"We're counting birds." (And what were you doing, buddy?)
As soon as I'd finished tallying up sheet number 20 we made for a
boat-launching ramp at the end of a campsite on Jordan Lake. A few owl
whinnies by Will brought some very cooperative BROWN-HEADED NUTHATCHES
close enough for some good looks. They were accompanied by Pine Warblers
and, on a tree at the shore, a stunning singing male Yellow-throated
Warbler- my favorite bird of the trip. Over the water we saw an Osprey
and, in the distance, its nest on the top of a partly-submerged snag.
A brief hike down the abandoned road to the valley that was (in 1983)
flooded by newly-created Jordan Lake produced great views of a Hooded
Warbler. Two more were singing nearby, as was a Northern Parula. "Have you
ever done a big day here?" Lynn asked Will at one point. "Yeah, my best
total was 100 species I got on a big day in May," he responded. I
restrained myself from saying "Why don't you come to Saskatchewan; you
could get . . . ."
Our next stop was a trail that Will thought might harbor the southern race
of Blue-headed Vireo. It was marked with newly-posted private property
signs. We vacillated about going further. I had visions of being shot at
by shotgun-toting good ol' boys. However, on seeing that the signs had
been signed by the local water authority (and that the worst we could
therefore expect was a fusillade from super-soakers) we decided to
proceed. We came up empty, except for the ticks I managed to acquire.
"Lone Star Ticks," noted Will, "they won't give you Rocky Mountain Spotted
Fever, but they will give you . . . ." and he proceeded to list a number
of chronic debilitating diseases that I could acquire from these, well,
yes, "life bugs".
Will left us at the parking lot of the Indian Point nature trail,
mentioning that a stop at the lake via nearby Stagecoach Road could
produce Prothonotary Warbler. After thanking him profusely for his
generosity, hospitality, and expert guidance we headed off down the trail.
Hearing a Yellow-throated Vireo call, I tried to draw it into view by
imitating a Screech Owl, but the vireo evidently recognized my prairie
accent. We had fun, though, comparing its burry call with that of a nearby
Red-eyed Vireo. Making our way down to the wildlife viewing platform on
the lakeshore, we picked out an immature Bald Eagle that was lurking near
the Osprey nest on the near shore-as well as the Osprey itself. On the
walk back I noticed a small yellow warbler foraging on a stalk at ground
level. It turned out to be a stunning male Prothonotary Warbler that ended
up entertaining us for a couple of minutes with its singing, hawking, and
gleaning.
We ended up with 76 species heard or seen for the trip (78 if you count
the Red-winged Blackbird that I missed and the Eastern Meadowlark that
only Will heard). Not bad, considering that Will had warned us at the
outset that this was the worst week of the year for species diversity,
that we saw no gulls or terns (too far from tidewater) and no shorebirds
except Killdeer-and that we'd seen all of our target species (and pretty
well all the breeding warblers). Some avian wasteland!
Trip List
Double-crested Cormorant
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Green Heron
Turkey Vulture
Canada Goose
Mallard
Osprey
Bald Eagle
Cooper's Hawk
Red-shouldered Hawk
Killdeer
Rock Dove
Mourning Dove
Yellow-billed Cuckoo
Barred Owl
Common Nighthawk
Chuck-Will's-Widow
WHIPPOORWILL
Chimney Swift
Belted Kingfisher
Red-headed Woodpecker
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Eastern Wood-Pewee
Acadian Flycatcher
Eastern Phoebe
Great Crested Flycatcher
Eastern Kingbird
White-eyed Vireo
Yellow-throated Vireo
Red-eyed Vireo
Blue Jay
American Crow
FISH CROW
Purple Martin
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
Cliff Swallow
Barn Swallow
Carolina Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
White-breasted Nuthatch
BROWN-HEADED NUTHATCH
Carolina Wren
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Eastern Bluebird
Wood Thrush
American Robin
Gray Catbird
Northern Mockingbird
Brown Thrasher
European Starling
Northern Parula
Yellow-throated Warbler
Pine Warbler
Prothonotary Warbler
Ovenbird
KENTUCKY Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Hooded Warbler
Yellow-breasted Chat
Summer Tanager
Scarlet Tanager
Eastern Towhee
Chipping Sparrow
Field Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Northern Cardinal
Blue Grosbeak
Indigo Bunting
Common Grackle
Brown-headed Cowbird
House Finch
American Goldfinch
House Sparrow
H.D. Sandy Ayer (Mr.)
Director of Library Services
Canadian Bible College/Canadian Theological Seminary
4400 4th Ave.
Regina, Sask., Canada
S4T 0H8
306-545-1515
306-545-0210 fax