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Outer Banks Trip, 1/18-20/03



This year Rena and I got to make our January trip to the Outer Banks. We missed last year. Instead of rain and blustery weather as in past years, we had cold temperatures, bright sunshine, and wind. We had all of the usual waterfowl, including twelve species of ducks. Our best birds were the peregrine that passing birders pointed out to us at Pea Island and that was there all three days, a merlin (may have been two) that Rena spotted and we were able to study at close range (life birds for both of us), the long-billed dowitchers that we saw and heard at Bodie Island lighthouse pond, a lesser black-backed gull (life bird for both of us) that was hanging around the beach near our motel, a lesser yellowlegs that Rena found and I observed closely, and a mob of cedar waxwings.
We had some interesting misses: no scoters or scaup, no horned grebes, no gannet, and no peeps. We also turned up an unusual specimen of a common species: yellow-rumped warbler. Near the old Frisco airfield we were sorting through the yellow-rumps, hoping for palm or orange-crowned, when we both saw and examined a yellow-rump that had a yellow throat like a western Audubon's. The bird was definitely a yellow-rump, except for the yellow throat it looked like all of the others.
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Robert C. Perkins, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Methodist College, Fayetteville, NC 28311
910-630-7037 rperkins@methodist.edu