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Outer Banks trip



    My wife and I went to the Outer Banks for a long weekend.  By the time
we got to Manteo on Thursday afternoon, the skies were clearing and the
wind had picked up.  Friday brought clear skies, chilly temperatures, and
lots of wind.  Saturday was a little warmer, not as windy, but the clouds
increased as the day wore on.  Sunday we had rain all day, first on the
Ocracoke-Swan Quarter ferry, then at Mattamuskeet.
    There were lots of ducks at Pea Island, the ponds in the area around
Buxton and Cape Hatteras, and on the sound side of the banks.  We saw
American avocets on the North Pond at Pea Island.
On Ocracoke, I saw a pretty swamp sparrow in some brush beside a small
creek.  A clapper rail decided to cross the same creek while I was there
looking.  Serendipity!
    We saw scaup on the sound side of Nag's Head, at the Hatteras
lighthouse ponds, and the Hatteras salt pond, but as usual, sorting out
lesser and greater was mostly impossible.  On Friday with good light at one
of the lighthouse ponds, I saw a drake with a greenish tint to its black
head.  At the same pond on Saturday the light wasn't as good, but I did see
a drake take off and noted that the white went at least half way up into
its primaries, so I'm thinking that we did see a greater scaup.
    I watched for some of the rarer gulls, but the only ones that I was
able to id were great black-backed, herring, ring-billed and Bonaparte's.
The only terns were Forster's.
    At Mattamuskeet, in the impoundment bordered by the road into the
headquarters, there were plenty of tundra swans, coots, and dabbling ducks.
Out on the lake we found flocks of ruddy ducks but very few others.  With
the rain we were unable to use our scope to check distant flocks, so there
may have been other divers out farther.
    We enjoyed the trip and will probably go again next winter.

--------------------------------------------------
Robert C. Perkins, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Methodist College, Fayetteville, NC 28311
910-630-7037     rperkins@methodist.edu