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Beaufort vicinity, March 7-15 (another Josh epic)



Hi Carolinabirders,

I'm taking a course at Duke this semester to fulfill a requirement that I
declare a minor and take two courses in it. The minor is environmental
science, and the course is Environ. 298 section 54, Field Ornithology,
taught by Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Biology Stuart L. Pimm, author
of the conservation tome "The World According to Pimm", expert on the Cape
Sable Seaside Sparrow... I could go on and on. THe course involved
spending the past week, Duke's spring break, staying at Duke's marine lab,
birding, hearing lectures, taking quizzes, and doing short research
projects.

The drive down on Friday, March 7 included my first Osprey of the year,
and first Tree Swallows since the Ocracoke CBC, among a total of 16
species, nearly all identified at speeds above 50 mph.

On Saturday Stuart very much wanted to see the waterfowl spectacle at
Mattamuskeet NWR and vicinity. Unfortunately, the 50,000-plus Snow Geese
that had been at Pungo Lake in January were gone; we saw just one, a Blue
morph in a big flock of Canadas. However, the 5,000 or so Tundra Swans
were well worth the trip; a single flock near Pungo included 1000 or so!
And the birds on Lake Mattamuskeet flew over the causeway by the dozen
while we ate lunch. Before reaching the NWRs, we were treated to
*hundreds* of Lesser Scaup peppering the Pamlico River from one ferry,
with smaller numbers on the Neuse. The Pamlico also featured a few Surf
Scoters, the Neuse a large number of fly-by Red-throated Loons. The rarest
bird of the day was an immature White-crowned Sparrow which was spotted by
Anna Kopitov, a birder from California who relocated to attend Duke, along
the Mattamuskeet Causeway.

Sunday opened with a trip to Howland Rock. En route, I picked up Eurasian
Collared-Dove, a state bird for me; I saw a few more later in the week.
Once there, we were treated to lots of Short-billed Dowitchers and Marbled
Godwits, an Osprey collecting sticks for its nest, and a River Otter
swimming by! At the US 70 crossing of the North River, we had both species
of Yellowlegs, a Common Snipe, and a Tricolored Heron.

Then we hit the location that we'd be coming back to all weekend, with
lots of company: Fort Macon State Park. I heard a decidedly different chip
note near the restroom, and scouted out an Orange-crowned Warbler which
eventually let the rest of the group see it too. I spotted two little gray
lumps on an offshore channel marker which we presumed to be Purple
Sandpipers; we would later get fantastic views of these, my second state
bird of the week, on the nearby jetty. Down next to the jetty, I spotted
some much closer Sanderlings, and walked on ahead to point them out to my
classmates, when I heard Stuart calling to me from behind. He pointed into
the surf, where I saw a RAZORBILL feeding less than 10 feet off the
shoreline! Much better looks than I had ever had before, but just a taste
of things to come (as you all know by now). Stuart scoped the ocean and
tallied 19 Razorbills total. Schools of False Albacore fed agitatedly in
the surf, chased by flocks of Bonaparte's Gulls.

With all this as a backdrop, Dr. Pimm decided to give us his first
lecture! The topic was migration, with such long-distance movers as the
Purple Sandpipers as props. The lecture was interrupted twice: the first
was a park ranger in a pickup truck, whom I would later figure out to be
Randy Newman, birder and author of the Fort Macon chapter of "Birdwatching
in North Carolina State Parks". He gave us several tips about birds in the
park. The second was my cel-phone, which turned out to be John Fussell,
letting us know that he had seen *80* Razorbills at the same spot that
morning, plus a Dovekie! I was very jealous, as I needed the Dovekie for
my life list... On our way out, we enjoyed the big roost of Black-crowned
Night Herons, some with nice breeding plumes.

THat afternoon Stuart gave the other students a chance to work on their
basic birding skills, specifically directing Anna and I to not help them.
I decided to spend the free couple of hours looking for the two life birds
I could reasonably expect to find in the area: Black Rail and Nelson's
Sharp-tailed Sparrow. Unfortunately, it was low tide. I donned some grungy
clothes and headed across US 70 into a salt marsh. I made it about 25
yards in before fully realizing that the muck out there has a remarkable
similarity to quicksand: my legs were completely swallowed and my camera
dragging the surface when I finally conceded defeat and turned back. The
mud formed such a persistent black coat that my classmates who encountered
me walking back thought I was wearing black hip-boots over my blue jeans!

Monday morning we hitched a ride out to Carrot Island, aka Bird Shoal, aka
the Rachel Carson Estuarine Preserve. Several Sharp-shinned Hawks flew by
overhead going north, one pausing to pose briefly atop a snag. A flock of
peeps almost convinced us they were Western Sandpipers, but Anna thought
they looked and Stuart thought they acted like Least, which they turned
out to be; the mud had stained their yellow legs dark, much like my jeans
the previous day. Anna also spotted a Purple Martin which flew in off the
ocean; we hoped it was the state's first of the year, until I saw here
that John Fussell beat us to it by two days...

After that we dove into our research projects: we had just four days to
collect the data! Anna and I teamed up to record dive duration in surface-
diving birds (loons, grebes, cormorants, mergansers, and diving ducks).
But Tuesday afternoon, a phone call from Stuart interrupted to say that he
had found a Brunnich's Guillemot, aka THICK-BILLED MURRE! Science took a
break as we sped over to enjoy this critter. I couldn't reach either John
Fussell or Will Cook on my cel-phone, so had to torture Durham-bound Sandy
Cash - the only other Carolinabirder for whom I had a phone number at the
time - with the details of Stuart's find so the word could get out! I was
very glad to find that the critter stuck around so long, becoming a state
bird for lots of people, as well as a lifer for Stuart (who has birded
several continents but not Atlantic Canada in the summertime) and many
other folks. It also wound up as a most improbable species both in Anna's
and my data set, and in the field ID quiz (see below).

Wednesday dawned to a pea-soup fog and abruptly warm weather. When the fog
rose, and we reached the Triple S Pier, the gentle warm south wind was
propelling a HUGE migratory movement over the water! A river of
Bonaparte's Gulls and Red-throated Loons, flock after flock of Black
Scoters and Horned Grebes, intermittent Razorbills and Northern Gannets,
and a few Lesser Scaup mixed into the Scoter flocks, as well as one bird
which I think was an Oldsquaw, all streaming northeast along the coast.
More of all (except the scoters) fed around the pier, with some Horned
Grebes in nearly full breeding plumage, while the loons were just getting
started. Anna spotted one Razorbill which swam *under* the pier, allowing
fantastic looks! We heard second-hand of a Piping Plover, spotted at Fort
Macon by Stuart. Perhaps the biggest surprise on Wednesday happened when I
looked at an approaching flock of about 20 American Oystercatchers, and
saw a mostly-white bird in their midst: a winter-plumage American Avocet!
Meanwhile, the pair who were studying forest insectivores, who had not
found much around Fort Macon, relocated to Roosevelt Natural Area near the
Pine Knoll Shores branch of the NC Aquarium and had much better luck: Red-
headed and Pileated Woodpecker, a White-eyed Vireo, a few Brown Creepers,
and four more Orange-crowned Warblers!

Thursday morning several of us got to see a couple of Clapper Rails along
Calico Creek on the north side of Morehead City, and Anna spotted a Black
Skimmer further upstream. That afternoon, after Anna was unfortunately
called away and I was finishing up our data collection alone, I enjoyed
the continuing migration. I spotted 8-10 White-winged Scoters in one Black
Scoter string, while some other birders on the jetty picked some Surfs out
of another. Unexpected dabblers like American Wigeon and Green-winged Teal
appeared out over the ocean as well. I heard second-hand that Stuart and
John had joined forces to pick out four adult Little Gulls out of the
thousands of passing Bonaparte's that morning. One landbird joined the
party; I saw it fly in off the ocean and flit up under the pier, but could
never find it again to ID it.

Then my cel-phone rang again; it was the course TA, Kyle Van Houtan,
letting me know that the gang of birders enjoying the Murre had found a
DOVEKIE! This was a potential life bird for me, but I had been left at the
pier without a car! Fortunately, Stuart also had never seen this one, so
he picked me up on his way there, and we both had excellent views, as did
Murre-chasers like Harry LeGrand and Florida's Jack Dozier.

Thursday night was the annual "Pimm in the Pub" lecture, wherein Stuart
discussed sexual selection theories with extensive examples from the bird
world and a few hilariously accurate parallel pop-culture examples. This
followed Tuesday and Wednesday night lectures introducing us to most of
the world's bird orders and families.

Friday was quiz day. In the morning, we wandered the marine lab and then
Fort Fisher and the Triple S; Stuart pointed out bird species and gave
them numbers, 1 to 23, and we had to write down the common name of each
one. He had planned on 25 species, but that morning rose with a sudden
howling and frigid north wind, such that getting good looks at even
mockingbirds and starlings was too much of a challenge! The quiz was
interrupted by a Peregrine Falcon that streaked by as we were pulling out
of the marine lab driveway. We had to carefully warn Judy Murray, Bruce
Smithson, and Harry Sell - all out enjoying the Murre yesterday morning -
not to give away any of our quiz answers, not even the Murre! We also had
to leave off a few Red Knots, since most of us were seeing them for the
first time of the week yesterday. Then we had a few hours to crunch data
from our projects and prepare ten-minute oral presentations. Then another
quiz, this time identifying bird orders and families from slides; I blew
my perfect score by misidentifying a Seriema (Gruiformes, Cariamidae) as a
Secretary Bird (Sagitariidae, Ciconiiformes).

We drove back to Durham this morning. I tried my best to convince my
fellow students to take a scenic route back, perhaps via the Outer Banks,
but they were all too intent on getting home. THen I get back here and
find out about the Yellow-legged Gull and Clark's Grebe... Oh, well. I had
three alcids in a week; I can't say I've been deprived of good birds
lately! Now I just have to turn our diving bird data into a term paper...
and get all my alcid photos developed...

Good birding!

Josh


Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/