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White-faced Ibis (which is NOT on Old Nags Head Road!)



Hi C-birders,

Judy Murray and I trekked out to Nags Head to see the White-faced Ibis
this morning. We watched the critter from roughly 11:15 to 11:45 AM in
the usual place on the 9500 block. It was accompanied by a single Glossy
Ibis.

A warning about that usual place. Several sources on Carolinabirds,
including the RBA, and several people who signed reports in at the Pea
Island NWR visitor's center, name the bird's location as "Old Nags Head
Road". This is NOT helpful! Judy and I picked up a map of the Outer Banks
to help us find the road, and thus theoretically the bird. The only "Old
Nags Head Road" on the map is a very long unpaved two-track which winds
seemingly endlessly through miles of beautiful maritime forest, including
much of The Nature Conservancy's Nags Head Woods preserve, before
dead-ending in the middle of nowhere, a long way from the nearest ibis. Or
even ditch. Even at the 9500 block.

Fortunately, I still had cel-phone reception out there, my wife was still
at home, and the most recent update on the ibis from Will and Jeff (thanks
guys!) referred to the road by the name actually used on the map: Old
Oregon Inlet Road. This is also the name that appears on every street sign
at every intersection for the entire length of the road where the ibis is
being seen. The only place where this road is called "Old Nags Head Road"
is on a brown-and-white park information sign near its south end
intersection with route 12.

Not that I didn't enjoy driving Old Nags Head Road. It looks like a
wonderful place, I'd especially like to try walking or biking it during
migration sometime. Or maybe spotlighting it at night for herps. But it
did delay us by an hour or two in getting to the ibis. And get my car
significantly dirtier.

Warning #2: a few folks have remarked on how tame and approachable the
ibis is. This applied ONLY to cars. We tried once to exit our car and the
bird immediately flushed. It returned to the 9500 block not too long
afterwards, but everybody should use the old car-as-a-blind trick for
approaching this bird.

Warning #3: it's tourist season out there. Traffic is not good, and even
on Friday morning about 3/4 of the motels had the "NO" up next to the
"VACANCY". Parking is in very short supply at popular spots like the
visitors' centers at Pea Island NWR and Nags Head Woods. Be ready!

Judy and I also checked out the other OBX birder hangouts. Bodie Island
had very little besides yellowlegs. Pea Island's North Pond was much
busier and more diverse, especially with waders, but had disturbingly many
Canada Geese for the time of year; I counted over 180! The northeast
corner of South Pond had lots of Least Terns and a few shorebirds: more
Spotted Sandpipers than I expected, and one that looked exciting but was
too far away to ID; probably just a Lesser Yellowlegs with mud blotched on
its breast, and a strained neck muscle forcing it to feed by sweeping its
bill side-to-side through the water... No sign of the Curlew Sandpiper
that we could detect, but most birds were too far in to see from the road.
Biggest surprise at Alligator River NWR (where we mostly saw butterflies
and dragonflies) was a Cedar Waxwing right by the Milltail Road entrance.
And Lake Phelps was pretty devoid of non-Killdeer forms of life.

Sighting from yesterday, just north of downtown Durham: a Cooper's Hawk
being mobbed... by about 20 Chimney Swifts! Had not seen or heard about
swifts mobbing before. Pretty amusing to watch, unless you're an
accipiter.

On Fri, 12 Jul 2002, Leah Campbell wrote:
>
> On a different topic, I was wondering how common the orange and yellow house
> finch color morphs are. I have an all-orange (tangerine) one at my feeders
> this year, and it is the first I've ever seen. Very pretty.

House Finch color variation is diet-related. I could go on at length, but
I'll give our resident expert, Chris Hill, a chance to do it first...

Good birding,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/