This past week I found out a work trip to Florida was going to clash with the second Pelagic I had scheduled for this year in May. So I contacted Patteson Pelagics and they graciously let me come up early for one of their Discovery trips this past weekend. Of course the Purple Gallinule being seen in Buxton was on the way so even if the pelagic was not successful I could get that.
Friday evening I got to Buxton just before sunset and went straight to the Buxton Woods trail to look for the Gallinule. Just as I got down to the area where he has been seen, I saw some movement at my feet and jumped back. Close call! This Eastern Cottonmouth slithered into the water next to the trail. He was at least 3-4 feet long and looked like he could inflict some serious damage.
Once I recovered from that encounter, I scanned the Sedge for the Gallinule. After some time I was able to find a Common Gallinule hidden in the reeds.
Common Gallinule - note red "shield". I was looking for the Purple Gallinule's blue shield.
As it was quickly getting dark I went on a search for lodging and got totally skunked. Apparently this weekend was a 4x4 fishing tournament and all motels were booked. However, I kind of thought this might happen so I had brought my tent. It did not take long to find a campsite for $20 and I was able to get my fantastic REI tent up in 10 minutes flat. Good thing too because it started to rain. It was a rough night with thunderstorms moving through until about midnight. The tent held up well and I stayed dry but it was hard to get sleep with all the thunder and flapping of the tent walls. I was paranoid about the drive down to Hatteras and had some fitful sleep so I ended up packing up and heading down at 4am. Anyway, long story short Brian and Kate from Patteson Pelagics pulled the plug due to high winds. Pelagics are definitely subject to birding highs and lows probably more than any other type of birding. Sure with land birding you might drive 4-5 hours to see a bird that ends up being gone and that is definitely disappointing. However, try driving 6 hours then finding out the trip is canceled or postponed and being faced with a 6 hour drive back home after roughing it in a tent all night in a storm. Luckily in this case they had a rain date for Sunday and Melissa is a trooper and let me stay for another night.
So with a whole Saturday on the OBX to kill suddenly I had more than enough time to get some specialty birds like the Purple Gallinule and maybe the Ring-necked Pheasants that roam the dunes of Avon.
First stop was the Buxton Woods trail. It was eerily quiet for an early morning and I made the first pass of the loop trail with nothing doing. But I had nothing going on so I went for a second loop. Thats when I came upon Brian Patteson and Kate quietly staring in the reeds. Kate quickly got me on the bird which was only 15-20 feet out hunting frogs.
Purple Gallinule - note the blue "shield" on forehead. We got some some excellent looks of the whole bird but I was not fast enough with the camera.
On the way out of the trail, I ran into a nice flock of Cedar Waxwings and some warblers mixed in. I was particularly interested in the color variation of the waxwing's tails.
Orange tipped Cedar Waxwing variant - thought to be diet related.
More common yellow tipped variant.
The rest of the day was spent hunting rarities at Pea Island, Avon for Pheasants and Cape Point for gulls. Unfortunately I couldn't turn any up but had some good birding none the less.
Bonaparte Gull - I was scrutinizing all the gulls for rarities.
Yellowlegs - I think Lesser but hard to tell with no other birds for perspective.
Eastern Kingbird.
Chipping Sparrow - this is one of those easy birds I just have not added to my photographic list for whatever reason.
Prairie Warbler - of course now that I am done trying to hunt for this bird, I was seeing them everywhere.
Least Tern - another easy bird to add to the list.
European Starling - pretty much a pest but the coloration on their backs is pretty nice if you can get past the fact that they are an "invasive" species.
Least Tern.
At Salt Pond which is a big pond at Cape Point the tip of the OBX, there was a good group of gulls that I combed through but I could not produce a Little Gull or Glaucous.
Laughing Gull and full breeding plumaged Bonaparte Gull. This Bonaparte was looked at closely for a long time. His small size, reddish legs and breeding plumage threw me off but in the end it just did not have the other diagnostic marks of the Little Gull like the more extensive hood, white tipped wings and black under wings.
Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs - love when these birds stand next to each other so you can get the comparison. Not only the size, but you can see the Greater is more heavily barred and the bill is longer compared to the head.
I was exhausted after a full day in the sun and the bad sleep from the previous night so I tried my luck back at the Cape Pines Motel and luck would have it they had one room. I can't say enough about this Motel, clean, relatively cheap and a real OBX experience. Unfortunately a couple of the off-road fisherman were partying next door and were really loud but I was so tired I was able to get sleep pretty quick.
I won't get into politics too much, but I did want to mention for any birders that have not been to the OBX, there is a weird kerfuffle going on between birders/nature lovers and off-roading surf fisherman. Obviously the former group wants to preserve as many beaches as possible, and the latter wants to be able to drive almost anywhere on the beach. Now in any of these types of situations, there is always pragmatics and people that want to compromise but obviously the extremists on both sides are the ones that get the spotlight. It has become so venomous on the OBX that it can actually be uncomfortable walking around with binoculars and forget it if you are the birder type that wears all the gear too (binoc sling, wide brimmed hat and Crocodile Hunter outfit). Anyway, I was somewhat careful to not advertise that I was a birder because I just did not want to deal with having a discussion with a bunch of neanderthals. Again, I should not oversimplify, but I can't help myself so here goes. The most extreme of the bird haters have bumper stickers with a target around a logo of the Piping Plovers. All because they want to be able to drive all over the beach with their 4x4s. They say its because they want access to the best fishing spots, but I was watching a large group of them at Cape Point and most of them did not seem to be doing much fishing or at least catching of fish. In fact the whole time I was there which was hours, I did not see one fish landed. There was tons of music blasting, beer drinking and general partying. Now why this needs to be done in the most secluded areas is beyond me. I am sure there are some die hard surf fishermen that have a valid argument and could drive on secluded sections of beach without too much disruption but unfortunately the vast majority of the 4x4ers are not like that. In fact, I noted that most of them were huge and could stand to take a walk down the beach instead of driving up the spots and breaking out the BBQ and beer. I am an avid fisherman myself, and I also like taking drives down Ft. Fisher spit for birds, but I just think there needs to be some compromise and some areas just should be off limits.
Anyway, off my soapbox and into the boat! Luckily Sunday dawned a beautiful day with not too much wind and we set out for the Gulf Stream. I will not go into too much detail. We ended up with only two pelagic species but had good numbers of them following the boat all day. We saw a couple interesting birds that remained unidentified.
Wilson's Storm-Petrel - look closely and you can see the legs reach past the tail. This is the diagnostic for this species.
Ok get ready for a bunch of Black-capped Petrel pictures because that's what I saw all day. However, if I had to pick one bird to look at all day this is the one. So graceful and majestic. When I had a pelagic last year with Big Year birder Neil Hayward, he told me that the Black-capped Petrel was his favorite bird. Not sure if that was true or if he was just in the moment, but I agree its one of the most interesting. Kate told me about the white-faced versus black-faced subspecies and how they have been able to locate the breeding location for one of them on some cliffs in Hispaniola but the other remains a mystery.
Wilson's Storm-petrel - Kate tried her best to make the many storm-petrels into a Band-rumped or Leach's but no such luck.
Anyway, not a great trip for diversity, but I had a good time none the less.
I should mention that while I was on the boat, I was checking my email and saw that everyone in NC was getting loads of migrants and this was making me jealous. I know, the grass is always greener. So when Sherry told me she found a reliable Chat spot under advice from Greg, I asked and she agreed to meet me at Lee Bucks in the morning on Monday.
Yellow-breasted Chat - This was the most accommodating Chat I have ever seen.
We got some other first of year birds for me like Orchard Oriole and Kentucky Warbler, but I did not get pictures and in fact did not even see the Kentucky but we were confident on the song. Sherry had seen the Kentucky the day before.
We even had what we thought was a Philadelphia Vireo but eBird flagged it as unexpected and since I did not get a picture I decided not to count it.
Can't wait for the mountains next week.
Great times!
