Lots of Wings Over Water for the Encore

Friday, December 4, 2015

This area traditionally has had a fall festival called Wings Over Water.  It took place in early November. However I think it had some conflicts with another local event, so was moved back into October, but also added  another weekend of field trips, called WOW Encore, this past weekend.  The trips took place on three of our refuges  Volunteers get to go on trips for free, as long as they haven't filled. I got to go on one last Friday - at Pea Island, at exactly where I've been birding and working.  But I found more places to look for birds and we are also getting new arrivals every day. My leader, a local volunteer, told me some other places to look for different species.  So lots was new to me and  I was happy.  Here are a few birds  I managed to capture with my sickly camera.

I stopped at the photo blind on the way.  Most of my pictures were worthless, due to having to shoot through the grasses.  (I'm working on getting that fixed.) But I loved my first of fall view of green-wing teal flying in over the sleeping tundra swans. And the blog header picture is of a few of the fifty avocets that were sleeping and then just waking up with a quick flight that ended where it began.

Green wing teal over tundra swans

I stopped back at the blind on Saturday and caught these in early sunlight

We saw about 60 dunlin, but most too far away to photograph

There were several at the blind Saturday

I loved this because I was able to capture so many species. Gulls are greater black-backed

We probably saw 60 American white pelicans

And probably even more Canada geese, the local trash birds

More bufflehead showed up - almost close enough for a picture

Two of the gobs of gadwall we saw - think the female has the sweetest bird face

Seven hundred or more snow geese flew in  - a first of season view for most of us

This western willet was on the beach

And didn't let the sea foam stop him from capturing a morsel

I capture one black-bellied plover also on land close to our trail

We saw several pie-billed greens

And seventeen greater yellow-legs - this one is hanging out on land. You can really see that
 the bill is about 1.5 X the head depth in this picture. Lesser yellow-legs have bills that are about the same - a 1:1 ratio with the head. Good to know if you can't ascertain the size. 

We saw two flocks of black scoters, totaling 100 birds, a few northern gannet at HUGE distances and a couple of royal terns, also far out over the Atlantic, which is just across the road from North Pond at Pea Island NWR. We also had a few pintails, and maybe 3000 redheads.

In the afternoon it was back to work at the Gateway Visitor Center n Manteo.

Pea Island and Its Winter Residents

I run two visitor centers here for most of my volunteer hours.  The biggest and most interesting interior is at the one we call the Gateway Visitor Center which is one of the many attractions at Manteo, on Roanoke Island,  North Carolina. It represents several eastern North Carolina national wildlife refuges that are also managed from the the same building.

But the one that is the most fun to work in is the Pea Island NWR Visitor Center.  It is on the outer banks, so gets lot of visitors and overlooks North Pond, which is about a mile and a half long and a half mile wide.  On my first visit, the waters were fairly empty, but they are getting fuller and getting more diverse birds as we are FINALLY getting a little cool weather. (But still seldom even jacket weather.) This pond has a path that goes around it  on three sides, before crossing the dunes to the Atlantic Ocean and then coming back across the road to the Visitor Center.  It also has three very good telescopes so visitors can hang out in the windowed front and enjoy birds without any effort.

And even the twelve mile trip from my house to the center is beautiful and interesting, and sometimes a little scary, if the winds are high and are filling the highway with sand. Highway 12 runs down the Outer Banks, a series of narrow islands off the eastern North Carolina coasts. The islands are moving west, or inland as the sand on the east side is carried to the back side, and a lot of it drops on the highway.  Sometimes big storms bring too much sand and close the road.  It can also flood.

View of Highway 12  almost to the refuge

These monsters keep moving the sand back to the ocean side - there were 7 of them working in a
5 mile stretch when the winds were blowing at 30mph

Most of our early migrants are tundra swans.  They will continue to come into the refuge over the next couple of months and will peak in the thousands.  And at one our sister refuges, they will number around 50,000.

One of my early pictures of swans

Tundra Swans and Mallards - this from the Alligator River Refuge on my first tour of both refuges

This "tunnel" is on the beginning of the walkway - the next two pictures
were taken immediately from the end on different days

A swan family - taken from the viewing area last Saturday before work

Part of a flock of thirty white pelicans feeding on North Pond just after sunrise 

Swans and ducks on South Pond, a few miles further south 

Lesser scaup, just coming out of eclipse plumage

A northern mocking bird - one of a pair that hang out near the visitor center

The next pictures were taken at a puddle at a Marina just off the refuge.  We have the same gulls, but they hang out too far away for decent pictures. 

Greater black-backed gulls - except for lessor at far right

Lesser black-backed gull

A funny looking black-bellied plover - after I decided to check it out, it turned into a golden plover 

And, as everywhere else,  there are killdeers

We have lots of the ubiquitous yellow-rumped warblers of the Myrtle subspecies

Of course, where there are ducks, and fish, there are eagles, osprey, and harriers.  I have seen all three on the refuge.  But this eagle was the only one I could catch on camera. He is sitting on the osprey platform directly outside the viewing windows of the visitor center.  That nest on that platform was destroyed by one of the hurricanes from last summer. Last weekend, a visitor came in to excitedly report that a pair of eagles - one adult and one immature - had put up several thousands of ducks off of South Pond. I'm looking forward to catching that sight for myself.

Bald eagle

Here we don't have great-tailed grackles and have the bright yellow-eyed version of the boat-tailed grackles. 

And for a little lagniappe, I get to see this lighthouse and a marina full of big fishing boats along my drive to and from work.  

Bodie Lighthouse in the sunset glow

This Friday I get to go to the Wings Over Water Encore on a trip to the closed portion of Pea Island Refuge with REAL Birders.  They let us volunteers go on trips that don't fill all the way up.  The Encore has happened because some other local event was happening in early November. So the festival planners decided to move it to October and do an encore in early December.  I think our birds are migrating later, so this will give more birds. Stay tuned.

And for more (and probably more exciting) blogs on wild birds, click on the picture.