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Doughton Park and vicinity



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/