Birding with the Boyz (22Mar2015)

Melissa was our running the Quintiles Half Marathon so I decided to get the boys out before it started to rain.  I had two target birds and we ended up getting both so it was a good couple hours.  George was not into it but Luke is competitive so I made a little game out of it and said that whoever guesses the closest number of species we find over the next two hours would win the game. George guessed 26, Luke 28 and I guessed 50 species.

We started out at Lee Bucks Rd in Brunswick County and slowly worked our way across to Governor's Rd and then finally up Route 17 back home.  It was actually really slow for most of the drive and as we got close to the West end of Governor's Rd. we had 28 species and Luke would have won if I had not found a very nice flock at the river crossing that has always been good for migrants.  This flock included several Parulas, a Blue-headed Vireo, a Yellow-throated Warbler, some Yellow-rumps, 4-5 Blue-gray Gnatcatchers and some other common birds like Chickadees, Titmice and both Kinglets.  Also a fly by of a Barred Owl.  Unfortunately I did not get a picture of the owl or the vireo.

Northern Parula

Yellow-throated Warbler

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

Right as we were wrapping it up, some good old boys showed up and began to fish some items from the black water like a cooler and some fishing gear.  They told me they had been in the river last night in a John boat and had hit the bottle too hard and flipped.    I could not imagine how much fun it must have been swimming in that black water swamp in the middle of the night.  However, they were some rough looking boys and did not seem to be any worse for wear.

We ended up with 42 species in a couple hours.

Great times.