Sunday Bloody Sunday (08Mar2015)

Ok it was not bloody, in fact it was beautiful and peaceful, but we did slay quite a few birds.  Today I joined John and friends for a stomp through North River Farms in Carteret County.

However back up a minute.  Yesterday while the boys were playing soccer at the Y, I walked to Burnt Mill Creek.

Yellow-rumped Warbler - For some reason I have not bothered with a YRW photo until now.  Poor butter-butts are under appreciated mainly due to their prevalence.  Soon I will be lamenting their loss.
 

Carolina Chickadee - I liked the background on this shot.  He was sitting on a throne of buds.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet - they are so cute.

Eastern Phoebe - I have thought about getting some peach colored spray paint and making one into a Say's Phoebe.

Pied-billed Grebe

The drive to North River Sunday morning was uneventful save a cop tailing me.  The police frequently follow me when I am driving at 4 in the morning because I am driving a truck with a 3 inch lift.  I am working as hard as I can to overturn the perception that only rednecks drive lifted trucks.  In fact I am going to be starting a support group for regular folk with lifted trucks... not really but someone should.

The first sight at NRFs is frequently a Clay-colored Sparrow.  They are way more prevalent than Chipping or Field Sparrows here.

We had three American Bittern.  This one refused to flush.  We got to within 15 feet of it and it simply strolled away further into the water.

This White-eyed Vireo was especially colorful.  It's blue head had a couple of fooled until we got some good looks.

Spring has sprung.  This is the first WE Vireo John has seen this winter so he thinks it is a migrant and not a resident.

I asked John if he could please get me a Horned Lark, so he promptly obliged.

Zoom in and you will see some truly devilish horns on this Lark.

This particular bird had a mate with him and we think they are nesting already.

Great times!

TGIF (06Mar2015)

Insomnia again last night... so I worked from 4 am to about 7am and then was so cross eyed I had to get away from the computer.  Reasoning that the unsettled weather might have brought some interesting birds to the beach, I headed down to WB.  The ocean was rough and Johnny Mercer's was locked so I started driving down to South End (Masonboro inlet).  That's when I saw a large raft of ducks on the intracoastal waterway.  Most times I would keep driving but I had a feeling it was not just Scaup.

White-winged Scoter!!  I have pics of Surf and Black so it was a good find.  Most of my views of WW Scoters this year have been very distant.

Here was an adult male White-winged Scoter.

I counted over 20 of them.

At the inlet this Great Cormorant flew by.  You can almost see the white hip patch.

On the beach there was 6 Piping Plover.  What in the world the so called Park Ranger needs to drive on the beach for is beyond me.  The South End is a small area, and he probably could use some exercise if he needs to patrol.  I was checking out the plover and he basically drove right through them.  The irony of a Park Ranger plowing through his charges was not lost on me.

This one was sporting some serious Bling.

Black Skimmer!

American Oystercatcher

Back to work!  Then in the evening back out for some more birding.  Lake Sutton was very birdy but nothing too special.

Downy WP

House Wren

The Orange-crowned Warblers were very confiding.

Golden-crowned Kinglet

This one particular Orange-crowned was not scared at all.  At one point he landed on my shoe!! I kid you not. Granted I was standing stock still for about 10 min.

Great times!!!

Serendipitous Sparrow or Jimmy Crack Corn Part Deux (03-04Mar2015)

More times than not the best birds are the happy accidents that were not preplanned.  Yesterday I had a flight in the early morning to go to Nebraska for work which I was actually looking forward to because I was hoping I would get a couple hours to search the Platte River Basin for some goodies.  Unfortunately my flight and many of the subsequent flights were canceled due to fog.  So from the airport I decided to cheer myself up by checking Sutton Lake.  I didn't have anything in mind, but I was close so it was not hard to convince myself to check it before going back to work.

Downy Woodpecker - This picture is actually from Halliburton Park on Tuesday.

Vesper Sparrow at Sutton Lake - this was the first group of birds I ran into and I immediately knew they were Vespers.  4 of them!!!  You can see white outer tail feathers and diagnostic auriculars (cheek feathers).  I have heard that Sutton has a good population of Vespers but this is the first time I saw them.  All 4 of them sat in a row on the barb wire.  Unfortunate those shots were very bad due to bad light but at least I got some serviceable shots of one bird.

Osprey - first of the year, at the lake proper.

Then I saw a sight for sore eyes, my good buddy Jimmy with his cracked corn.  For those of you that don't remember this is a man that drives the dirt road to Sutton Lake every day and chucks handfuls of cracked corn out his window.  His primary purpose is to give his dog some exercise as he is too old to walk with his dog and therefor he drives while his dog walks.

It was not long before many more sparrows showed up.

Swamp Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Eastern Towhee

Gray Catbird

Northern Cardinal - duh!

Field Sparrow on right side.

Savannah Sparrow

Sometimes Chipping sparrows can try to fool you, this one was doing his best Clay Colored impression which could have fooled me a couple years ago.

Plus it is easy to not be confused when the immature or female birds are hanging out with a bunch of mature ones.

Field Sparrow

Field, Savannah and Chipping in one picture.  The Field sparrow was levitating he was so happy to see Jimmy.

Great times.  And the best thing is I had to reschedule the Nebraska trip and the site wants me to come on week of March 19 which is actually much better for displaying Prairie Chickens.

Eared Grebe......Knot! 01Mar2015

I couldn't sleep last night, probably the thought of Eared Grebes were haunting my dreams.  I have seen many Eared Grebes, mainly in California.  However, I have not seen one or at least a good look at one in North Carolina.  Yesterday I was thinking I should head to Topsail in the afternoon to look for the Eared Grebe that Gilbert G has periodically been seeing up there.  However, family duties prevented me from getting away.  Then I heard from Sherry L that she had coincidentally gone there yesterday and got the Eared Grebe at the first turn off after getting on New River Inlet Rd.  ARGGGHHHHH.....

So when I woke at 3:30 am and could not fall back asleep (I periodically get insomnia), I jumped in my truck and headed up to Topsail.

These next couple photos are actually from Saturday (yesterday).

This Ruddy Duck at the Ft. Fisher Aquarium pond is almost in full breeding plumage.

Boat-tailed Grackles are very inquisitive.

Momma Great Horned Owl is still incubating her eggs at CB State Park.

The drive up to Topsail was uneventful. I began to check all the vantage points for Eared Grebe at first light.

In between checkpoints I found this accipiter.  Probably a Sharp-shin.

European Starling - some day I hope to go to Europe where giant flocks of Starlings can be seen performing acrobatics before roosting for the night.

Rock Pigeon

I checked about 20 vantage points and saw hundreds of Bonaparte Gulls and probably about 50 Horned Grebe, but no Eared materialized.

After giving up on Eared Grebe, I was able to at least find a nice flock of Red Knots mixed in with Willet.

I couldn't stay too long as it was George's 8th Bday.  We had a great time watching the snakes be fed at the Serpentarium.  However, the highlight to me was the Golden Macaws they have there.  Beautiful birds.  One even was sitting on an egg, but she did not know it was not fertilized.

This week I head to Grand Island, Nebraska for work.  I hope to get away for some birding in the afternoon after my job.  Grand Island has flocks of tens of thousand of Sandhill Cranes among other things.