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birding Brunswick Co. 12-8 sightings
- To: carolinabirds@duke.edu
- Subject: birding Brunswick Co. 12-8 sightings
- From: Jeff Pippen <jspippen@duke.edu>
- Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2001 23:09:33 -0500 (EST)
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
Birders,
I spent most of today poking around Oak Island and the greater Sunset
Beach area in Brunswick Co., NC. Although I had some embarassingly
pitiful misses (e.g. semi-palm plover, phoebe, goldfinch, b-h nuthatch,
etc.) I still
managed 98 species for the day. (I guess I should submit this for an ABA
Big Day, eh Josh?)
I found no real rarities, but some highlights included:
-- 3 Whimbrel (it's getting late for them)
-- 1 Black Rail (how lucky can you get?!)
-- 24 Common Moorhens (pretty high one-day total, I think)
-- 1 Merlin (flying down the beach)
-- 4 Loggerhead Shrikes (a good count; all within a stone's throw of the
ocean, Eric!)
-- a flock of nearly a thousand scoters, sitting on the glassy-surfaced
water off Sunset Beach! The vast majority were Black Scoters, but there
were a handful of Surf Scoters and 2 White-winged Scoters. Also mixed in
were R-t Loons, L. Scaup, Bufflehead, H. Grebe, cormorants, etc. And the
winner of the Most-Out-Of-Place bird goes to the drake Northern Shoveler
on the ocean in the flock of scoters!!
-- also saw Sedge Wren, both Sharp-tailed Sparrows, an impressive 9
American Alligators (seems like a high count for December), and hundreds
of Canonball Jellyfish were streaming by the Yaupon Beach pier.
Next time maybe I'll plan the day ahead of time and break a hundred . .
. :-)
Good birding!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Jeff Pippen jspippen@duke.edu
Biology Dept. Box 90338
Duke University, Durham, NC 27708 PH: (919) 660-7278
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^