A Goodbye Trip by Land and Water

March 23, 2016

My paddling buddy, John, and I were assigned the honorous duty of checking out the paddling trails at Alligator River. I STILL had not encountered any bears there, so I went early to do a personal bird survey and look for bears.

The moon was setting as I got to the refuge and sinking into the pine trees. Then, as the sun came up, it turned the western sky around the setting moon pink.

Several raptors were hunting in the early light.  I saw a couple of red tail hawks,  a Swainson's hawk and a harrier.

Red-tailed hawk

Several times, as I stopped along the driving tour, I  heard the "wheep" of an eastern towhee and finally the light was right to catch one.  I also heard and saw at least fifty yellow-rumped warblers who will also be leaving soon.

Eastern towhee

At several of the stops where I listened and looked for birds, I heard distant Onk-ah-loonk calls of bitterns setting up their territories. At one stop it was very near the car, so I eased a little further down the road to a stand of grass and stopped again.  The bird came toward me and filled up its esophagus, then called. Click here if you haven't experienced that wonderful call.

American bittern calling

I think this is a nutria

I admired how crooked this tree had grown, probably
while in the shadow of a larger tree

This was the closest I got to a bear but I found several piles of fresh scat

Swamp maples added color 

A close view of the maple seed pods

As the sun rose higher, turkey vultures spread their wings to warm up, then started soaring.

Turkey vultures

Several species of butterflies, including a couple of species of swallowtails, were feeding on the blooming Carolina Jasmine and willow blooms.

Black Swallowtail

Carolina jasmine

New leaves

Then it was time to get my canoe in the water. John was late so I put my canoe in I started paddling.  Finally he called me to tell the intern that he needed her to come unlock the canoes as he had the wrong key.  He finally showed up with a visiting woman who had her family with her.  She was part of a program to share how best to do cooperative work with landowners. John paddled with the son while the parents paddled their own canoe. They were not paddlers and the wind was picking up, so we could not do anything put a short paddle in protected waters. (Most of the trails are on wide creeks where the wind can be a big problem. )


I put up wood ducks while waiting for the rest of the group to show up and enjoyed the new growth.

My favorite kind of paddling

Pickerel weed was just starting to sprout

Volunteer John and a visitor

A visiting staffer and her husband as we came back

Even without bears, and with a way too short paddle, this was a beautiful morning.

As this posts comes out,  I'll be on my last day in the Pittsburgh and will be reporting for duty the following Friday.   Can't wait to see my summer home.


I'm linking up with Wild Bird Wednesday.  Click on the picture to see many more blogs on birds from around the world.

Getting Acquainted with Coastal North Carolina

One of the first things I planned to at my winter home was to go birding.  My boss took me on a tour of two of the refuges in our complex last Tuesday, then I went on a birding "walk" last Friday. We met at the Pea Island Visitor Center which will be my favorite place to work. It looks out over a large pond much loved by wintering tundra swans, white pelicans, and hopefully soon, ducks. But last Friday, the winds were blowing at 30 mph and the sand - this is on the outer islands and only yards from the sandiness of the beach - was sandblasting my skin off. So all of us just stayed inside and used our binoculars and the three scopes located in the left - in the picture - end of the building and watched the few brave birds that tried to fly as well as lots of them sitting or feeding on the water.

Pea Island NWR Visitor Center

For a complete list of the birds we saw there, click here. 

All of them were too far for pictures but I managed to collect a few more pictures last week.

A few of what will soon be thousands of tundra swans - this taken at Alligator River Refuge

A closer view of a tundra swan 

Tundra swans on a field the refuge is flooding 

Swans on one of the Pea Island ponds

 While on the bird walk. we saw a lot of great black-backed gulls and at least one lesser black-backed gulls and even one ring-billed gull, a much smaller bird. But they were all too far away to photograph. These gulls were playing in a puddle at a marina between the refuge and my house.  I also found the plover and killdeer there.

At least the middle gull is a greater black-backed gull, I think

 This may be a third winter lesser black-backed gull - help please

I think this is an American golden plover due to both it's eye-stripe and body shape

The upiquitous killdeer

I trained with another volunteer couple at Pea Island Visitor Center last Saturday but arrived early enough to do a little birding.  This time the wind was only about 19 mph and I spend a lot of time enjoying a group of about 30 pelicans tightly feeding. I even took several movies of the water ballet they were performing.

Pelican pack

I think all of these are sub-adults, born this year

There is a patch of scrub oak at the beginning of the trail.  When I stood on the boardwalk, and pished, about 20 yellow-romped warblers, AKA butterbutts, popped up

We have an osprey platform in front of the visitor center. The nest was blown away in a
 storm and has not been rebuilt, but this eagle spends a lot of time there as well as a kingfisher. 

I also stopped at the Brodie Light house and got a little bit of sunset color in the clouds behind it but no birds.

Bodie Lighthouse - Click here for the history

I really wanted to find more incoming birds and, to that end, drove over 300 miles last Monday, and almost got stuck in the mud on a dirt road, and backed almost half a mile to avoid impassable mud. I finally starting seeing birds flying overhead at Pocosin Lakes NWR, but the road became impassible before I reached the lake. I passed another refuge in the dark on the way home. But we just had a big cold front come through, so I bet I'll soon be seeing lots more ducks. And we'll have 50,000 or more tundra swans scattered over four refuges. 

And soon after this comes out, I'll be on a paddle with my new paddling guru, another volunteer here. He was supposed to train me, but he mostly told me about all the paddling places around here and showed me his kayak and paddles.  I only have an open canoe, so may not be able to do a lot of his paddles but definitely can do some of them. Stay tuned. I'll also try to capture some of our black bears for you soon.  He called me to paddle today but I had to work.  He works tomorrow but will be off at 12:30. Can't wait. 

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you take the challenge to get outdoors Thanksgiving day - but in the wild, not the shopping mall. 

And for a REALLY interesting blog about helping to band terns and pelicans, check out my fellow volunteer's blog. 

And check on the picture to link to other Wild Bird Blogs from around the world. 

My Winter Home: First Impressions

I arrived at my winter home last Monday. I'll be working at two refuges managed together, Pea Island NWR and Alligator River NWR.  Actually, I'll be mostly working at the Visitor Center in Mantaeo, NC and the one on the Pea Island NWR. I spent the weekend camping north of the refuges and paddling with a blogger friend. I had a problem finding the Visitor Center which serves serves several refuges along the North Carolina coast. That is because the street is actually their driveway and thus not recognized by my GPS. And asking for directions didn't work well either because I was asking for the refuge, not that visitor center.  And the two are several miles apart. So I spent some time casting about before I stumbled on signs to it.

There I met my new boss Tracy and several of the volunteers and staff. Tracy had me fill out some of my paperwork and gave me my work shirts - the light blue ones I've been coveting for years. The visitor center is only three years old and has beautiful displays of life along the Atlantic ocean and in the marches behind the dunes. I didn't take any pictures, so you'll have to wait to see pictures.  But soon I was following her to my bunkhouse. We drove back north  to South Nags Head and stopped at one of the beach houses - albeit one that had four or five houses between it and the ocean.  Then I found out THIS was the bunkhouse and I would usually be the only person here except for an intern that comes in on the weekends and for the RV volunteers that come to wash their clothes and use the Internet.  This is the nicest house  I've even lived in and I'm sure I'll enjoy living here.

There are views to the east, south, and west and also decks on all those sides.  I also have a screened-in room on the south side.  I can see the sun coming up over the Atlantic, with house shapes siluetted against it, and also see the sun set over Pimlico Sound.  The only drawback is that the basement, which houses two sets of washer/driers and is now storing my bike, is on the ground level.  Fourteen steps up is the door that goes into the hall leading to the 4 bedrooms, and two baths. Then it is another fifteen steps up to the open room that has the living, dining and kitchen areas.

I'm also in the smallest room I've ever tried to squeeze into and the kitchen also has a lot of wasted space. Between trying to find  places for what I bring in, before bringing in more, and needing to take lots of breaks from climbing stairs under burdens, I'm moving in very slowly.  But I do have all my big boxes out of the car and only need to pack up canned goods and bits and pieces. And I've ordered in some organizational tools - stacking bins, drawer dividers, and will soon get my current mess hidden.

I"m HOME

I picked this bedroom because it has the most floor and wall space

The living area taken from the east side

And then turning to shoot down into the kitchen which has two big refrigerators

The view off my back deck

My ocean view - this probably was at 400 mm

My first sunset over Pimlico Sound and taken off my back deck

Tuesday I got up early and got the essential groceries, then quickly made breakfast.  My boss arrived at 9:00 A.M. to take me on a tour of both refuges. I got to see the Pea Island Visitor Center, and chat with a couple that also has spent a lot of time at Anahuac NWR which is where I began my volunteering career.  Pea Island also had National Parks land adjacent to our land and we actually have visitors use their restrooms.  The refuge overlooks a pond and there are three telescopes set up in the visitor center to look at the distant birds.  That morning the bird du jour was the American white pelican.  There were hundreds of them there along with a few other species, including double crested cormorants and a few ducks, too far away for me to identify.

Then we had to drive several more miles to get to Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.  There we saw the fields were just starting to be flooded by the  pumps.  Tracy said that, the fall had been so wet, the farmers who grow corn in the summer and leave some behind for the swans, geese and ducks could not get the harvest in until just recently. I saw a pond full of tundra swans with a few mallards milling around among them. Otherwise, there were not many birds present.  But that should all change, culminating in the most birds here next January.

My first sunrise, taken from my side deck looking toward the Alantic Ocean

About a fourth of the tundra swans on the pond

I zoomed on the closest swans

Mallard ducks and swans

Today I'll work at the visitor center in Manteo all day, getting trained.  Then I'll be off on Thursday and Friday, before going down to train at the Pea Island Visitor Center. Friday I plan to go on a bird walk at Pea Island and then go to another site, supposed to be good for birds. I'll also have to go shopping for storage stuff to help me shoehorn into my room and the kitchen cabinets.  I'm going to be busy for several weeks just enjoying places on the Outer Banks. I looks like I'll be having a great winter.