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Oops, I did a no-no



This morning I checked out Beaver Dam Creek in southeastern Cumberland County, NC. I was looking for birds, butterflies and odenates as usual. I made my first stop just east of the community of Beaver Dam on NC 211. There I turned up the best bird of the day, a Louisiana Waterthrush. I made my second stop where Smith Road crosses Beaver Dam Creek. The best bird there was a Red-headed Woodpecker. I made my third stop on the Cumberland side of the South River at Butler Island Bridge Road. There, in addition to some nice skippers, I turned up a couple of Fragile Forktails (damselflies). I turned around and drove back to NC 211. When I got there, I turned onto 211 and then pulled onto the shoulder long enough to write the name of the road on my pad. I needed the location for my database on damselflies. I made one more stop along 211 when I spotted a turkey vulture with a hawk soaring above it. The hawk was a red-tailed.
Now, here's the oops: I hadn't been home much over an hour when a sheriff's deputy rang my doorbell. She asked me if I had been down in Beaver Dam this morning. I said yes. She said some parents got upset because I had stopped in front of the school in Beaver Dam.
I said, "I did?" [Shock]
"Yes."
I told her that I am a birder and that I had only stopped to write down the name of the road. I showed her my scratch pad with the day's list as evidence that I was telling the truth.
The no-no: Don't stop in front of a school because someone will call the cops. The US has certainly changed since I was growing up in the forties and fifties. Sigh!


Bob
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Robert C. Perkins, Ph.D.
Historian and General Outdoorsman
Fayetteville, NC 28311
rperkins@infionline.net