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Fort Fisher barrier spit on Sunday



On 5 January, Rich and Susan Boyd and Jack Fennell and I covered the
barrier spit south of Fort Fisher, as part of the Southport Christmas
Bird Count.

Excellent conditions--calm with a very high tide.  Our best find was 1
Wilson's Plover.  Other goodies were 3 Piping Plovers, a few Red Knots,
2 Merlins, 1 American Bittern, and all the marsh sparrows and marsh
wrens.  Thousands of shorebirds were congregated at high tide at the
site of the former New Inlet (which filled in a few years ago).

We also had 2 Ipswich Sparrows.  In my experience, this bird is much
more easily found adjacent to inlets and on low overwashed barrier
strands (like Masonboro Island), as opposed to well-developed dunes on
stable portions of barrier islands.  A thought: if you cover 10 miles of
good barrier island habitat for this species, what you have covered is
not an inconsequential percentage of the bird's wintering habitat.

John Fussell
Morehead City, NC
jfuss@clis.com

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