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Doughton Park and vicinity
- To: carolinabirds@duke.edu
- Subject: Doughton Park and vicinity
- From: Joshua Stuart Rose <jsr6@duke.edu>
- Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1999 22:26:53 -0400 (EDT)
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
Hi Carolinabirders,
Couldn't make it to the CBC meeting I'm afraid. But, as I mentioned to
the list earlier, we are hosting a herpetologist (actually an
evolutionary biologist who just happens to work on lizards) and took him
on a field trip. While most of the recommendations I received from this
list were for areas south and east of the Triangle (including one for the
town of Lizard Lick, which was hard to resist once I saw their web page
at http://www.lizardlick.com/), the flooding and other hurricane damage
made visiting this area dicey, as well as forcing the biodiversity class
to postpone its field trip to the Duke Marine Lab.
So instead, we headed up to the Blue Ridge Parkway and visited Doughton
Park in search of salamanders and such. Our luck was fairly good, all
things considered: no lizards, only two snakes - Northern Water Snake and
a little Ring-neck - and the dry conditions had most of the woodland
salamanders underground, but the streams were absolutely squirming with
the beasties! The vast majority appeared to be Shovelnose (Leurognathus
marmoratus), with a few Black-bellied (Desmognathus maculata) and one
nice Blue Ridge Two-lined (Eurycea wilderae). Couldn't find my real
targets, the Yonahlosee Salamander or Bog Turtle; maybe next time...
As for birds, the only sighting in the park was of a pair of Common
Ravens who flew over the trees croaking. After leaving the park, I
spotted a flock of Wild Turkeys, a dozen or so birds, along the Parkway
in a field. And before heading to the park, we had a picnic lunch at the
Mahogany Rock overlook, in the company of the CHBC mountains trip and the
local hawk counters. We arrived just in time to see a kettle of ~30
Broadwings rise up and pass over. Monarch Butterflies were passing by
regularly but only one or two at a time, and I spotted a few Gliders
(dragonflies), one Pantala and two Tramea sp. going in the same general
direction as the hawks.
Sorry I missed the meeting; maybe next year, if the timing's better...
Josh
Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Zoology
jsr6@acpub.duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/