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birding by boat, Jordan Lake/Northeast Creek Sunday 2/27



Will Cook mentioned that reports from Jordan Lake have been few lately, so
here's a brief one. 

I had my first birding-by-boat excursion of 2000 at Jordan Lake on Sunday
morning. Put my kayak in at the Hwy 751 bridge and spent a few hours slowly
paddling through the flooded woods up Northeast Creek. (You launch on the
west side of 751, so you have to go under the highway bridge to enter the
little bay on the east side; then bear to the right of the island and head
across toward pines on the other side.) It was an overcast, leafless scene,
still winter except that red maples were in bloom and also trout lilies on
one high, north-facing, deeply wooded slope. 

Birds were generally sparse, though I pished in a couple of nice mixed
flocks containing chickadees, titmice, brown creepers, a yellow rumped
warbler and a pine warbler. But I found a ton of red headed woodpeckers in
the dead trees there -- they were the most numerous of the four woodpecker
species I encountered (8 red headeds seen or heard, 5 or 6 downies, 3 or 4
red bellieds, and a pair of sapsuckers). I enjoyed learning the red headed's
churring call. 

Also of note: the water was so high that the actual creek channel was almost
impossible to stay with. There is now just a flooded bottomland forest that
you paddle through. I estimate the flooded area is up to one-half a mile
wide. At times I paddled through trees so close that it was a challenge not
to clothesline myself with the long kayak paddle. (I didn't get the lake
level on Sunday, but today it's 221.1 and falling, so it's still 5 feet over
normal operating level at 216. For reference, the gauge on the highway
bridge read 20.) 

If the lake stays high through March, Northeast Creek will be a really nice
and easy paddling destination for warblers at the beginning of spring
migration. So will New Hope Creek, about 2 miles north of the put-in. See
you on the lake!
Ginger_Travis@unc.edu
Chapel Hill, NC