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Frustrating day on the Outer Banks
- To: carolinabirds@duke.edu
- Subject: Frustrating day on the Outer Banks
- From: Joshua Stuart Rose <jsr6@duke.edu>
- Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 19:15:25 -0500 (EST)
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
Hi Carolinabirders,
I have to put this in perspective, though. After all, we WERE on the
Outer Banks, so the day was hardly a disappointment...
Before I get carried away, I should mention that my Rufous Hummingbird
was still around as of Thursday.
Frank and I took off early Saturday morning to try and fill a few more
holes in his life list. I picked him up at 4:30 AM at a party thrown by
another grad student. The party was still going. Cait Coberly and Tanya
Rehse, two of my other sometime-birding friends, were also there dancing,
but declined the invitation to come to the Banks with us. We picked up
Frank's aunt and headed east, whereupon they slept most of the way while
I drove. Only birds of note en route were a large flock of Tundra Swans
on a marshy pond beside US 64, at the Scotland Neck exit, and a few very
nice Wood Ducks in the roadside ditch as I drove through Alligator River
NWR.
I stopped at Pea Island NWR just to wake them both up. North Pond was
loaded with waterfowl, mostly Tundra Swan, Pintail, Gadwall, Green-winged
Teal, Black Duck, Ruddy Duck, and Northern Shoveler. We checked the bird
sightings clipboard and confirmed that the Harlequin Duck and Western
Grebe had been seen the previous day, along with THREE Red-necked Grebes!
None of the gulls had been reported since the previous weekend. I bought
a cassette of frog calls, and we set off for Avon, planning to return to
Pea and Bodie Islands if we had time later. South Pond was absolutely
loaded with Snow Geese, many more than had been evident during Wings Over
Water. Just before we reached the sign indicating that we had driven out
of the NWR, a Peregrine Falcon winged into view and raced up route 12 in
the opposite direction, back into the heart of the refuge.
At Avon Pier, however, life was unkind. The pier was closed for the
winter, and big waves with deep troughs made viewing difficult from the
beach. No Harlequin ever showed up, and we spent quite a while trying to
make IDs out of the many grebes (all Horned, as far as we could tell)
bobbing offshore. I also had false starts with several Red-throated Loons
that stretched their necks out, looking surprisingly grebey. I finally
spotted a non-Horned grebe flying past the jetty and out of sight; on the
far side of the jetty, after much effort, I finally spotted one
Red-necked Grebe with a pair of Red-breasted Mergansers. A pair of Surf
Scoters and a string of a dozen or so Black Scoters flew by going north,
as did several of the Red-throated Loons, making me worry that the
Harlequin had had similar migratory thoughts...
After a lunch break at the Hatteras Sandwich Factory (really good crab
cake and baked beans, woohoo!), we headed for Cape Point. Having gotten
stuck two of the three times I drove my Explorer out there, and having
since sold the Explorer for a vehicle with better gas mileage but less
ground clearance (an Outback), I opted for hiking the beach rather than
driving. On the one hand, I'm glad I did; there were astonishingly few
vehicles on the beach, the fewest I've seen in at least 5 visits there,
so getting towed out might have been much more difficult. On the other
hand, as I've been warned before, the gulls flushed from the beach before
Frank and I got anywhere near close enough to scan for subtle rarities
such as California, Thayer's, or Yellow-legged Gull. As usual, the huge
flocks of Bonaparte's Gulls which were previously reported had vanished
without a trace (we didn't see a single Bonnie all day!), taking the
Little Gulls with them. I'm starting to suspect that y'all are making
them up to tease me... We did see a small mob of gulls following one 4x4;
the vehicle turned out to contain Brad Carlson and a friend, and the mob
of gulls to contain "Snowball", the first-winter Glaucous Gull who's been
seeking handouts from fishermen all winter. We later found a Lesser
Black-backed Gull in a flock roosting next to one of the smaller salt
ponds. A Brant was grazing along the edge of the main pond, while a
Canvasback was out in the middle amidst many American Coots and
Ring-necked Ducks and a few more Tundra Swans.
During our hike on the beach, Keith Watson and his crew (Jeff Lewis, Pat
Moore, and Joan Kutulas) pulled up to say hello, and told us they had had
no better luck with gulls in their car than we had on foot, but they had
found the Harlequin further north at the Rodanthe pier. So Frank and I
rounded up his aunt (who was off beachcombing) and drove up that way. En
route (sort of), we joined the others in viewing the Painted Buntings in
Buxton. Alas, the Harlequin was no longer at Rodanthe when we arrived;
Kieth, Jeff, and Joan pulled in just as we were leaving, and told us that
it wasn't at Avon either. But what WAS in Rodanthe was a fly-by alcid,
that Frank saw while the two of us were scanning for the Harlequin from
separate vantage points. Frank, who has never seen a Harlequin Duck but
has seen all the Atlantic alcids hundreds of times, quickly ID'd the bird
as a Common Murre and returned to looking for the duck; by the time I
linked back up with him and told him how rare that species was in NC, the
alcid was long gone, so we couldn't confirm that it wasn't a Razorbill or
other species.
The alcid was going north, as was a steady stream of Northern Gannets in
strings of three to dozens of birds. We decided to make a last-ditch
effort; if the duck had moved north from Avon to Rodanthe, and the alcid
was flying north, we might catch one or the other at the jetty at Oregon
Inlet. No such luck; nothing at Oregon Inlet but more northbound gannets.
No Harlequin, no alcids, no eiders, no Purple Sandpipers, no Great
Cormorants, not even a Ruddy Turnstone! As I returned to the car, a
Black-crowned Night Heron flew overhead; I could almost hear the
curmudgeonly creature squawk "God didn't put us birds here just for you
to see us, y'know!"
After we broke for dinner, there was no sign of moonlight either, so we
decided to skip looking for Short-eared Owls at Alligator River and just
drive home. To put the frosting on the cake, Frank got pulled over for
speeding on the way back to Durham. But the officer let him off with a
warning...
Good birding,
Josh
Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)
jsr6@acpub.duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/