Battle of the Titans (02-06Feb2021)

Before I dive into a pictorial of my recent weekend trip, here are a couple photos from some after work forays mid last week.

At Carolina Beach lake late one evening I had a swallow/martin show up which is a little strange for February with maybe the exception of a Tree Swallow. However this was no Tree Swallow.

All dark large swallow immediately identified as a Purple Martin but it seems way too early for them.  I just checked and it seems they are the earliest of "spring" migrants and some appear in Florida as early as January so maybe its not unheard of.

Purple Martin.

White Ibis 

Meanwhile I have been taking some quick late afternoon trips to Airlie to clean up some year bird photo gaps where my schedule allows.  By 3pm I am frequently a little brain fried from work and a nice walk in the late afternoon is a nice way to refocus or really unfocus.  After that I can go back to doing some work in the evening to make up for it.

Black-crowned Night-herons love Airlie and sometimes there are 50 plus.

Barred Owls are common at Airlie Gardens but sometimes difficult to find due to their proclivity to roost in a tree with lots of tangles and brambles. Lately it's been easier to find them as the staff took it upon themselves to start yanking all the vines out of the trees near the lake.  I asked one of the workers why and he said the vines were getting too thick and he had no clue what he was pulling.  Unfortunately they were pulling things like Red Trumpet Vine and Confederate Jasmine, beautiful local natives that critters like and look nice in the spring.  Oh well, just another example of how there is a battle on across America to sterilize everything to our own detriment.  Part of the reason why Airlie is so nice is it has vines and native flowers all over and has for hundreds of years.  Now the owners are tearing that all down in favor of plastic sculptures and leaf blowers.

Black-and-white Warbler - try as they might, the staff will not be able to pull all the microscopic critters out of the trees at Airlie, so the warbler has been helping out.

Ospreys are year round at Airlie.

Great Egrets also roost at Airlie in large numbers.

Eastern Phoebe - one of the few flycatchers in NC that overwinter.

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker - doing what they do best, making sap wells and sucking whatever they can get.

The weather looked perfect for a pelagic last weekend so I signed up and headed to the banks on Friday.  My boss let me leave a little early and I had made it all the way to Cresswell, NC which is only 30 minutes from Nags Head when I got the dreaded email.  The pelagic had been canceled due to boat troubles.  ARGHGGhhhh....  I was so looking forward to the trip.  Wind was forecasted to be light NE which is ideal and the waves were minimal.  I had a really good feeling about this one.  Oh well, since I was so close and my hotel was not going to refund my stay I decided to spend Saturday on the banks and make the most of it.

First thing in the morning I stopped at the Ramp 44 access in Buxton and prepared to air down my tires for a trip out to Cape Point but I didn't get far as the birds were cooperative and the light was beautiful.  

The back road behind the Cape Point Campground is totally flooded and there were some birds being force to higher ground.

Common Gallinules are fairly rare on the banks.  This one was enjoying the flooded road.

Every once in a while American Bitterns will be so confident in their camouflage ability that they sit absolutely still in the wide open. 

Red-winged Blackbirds are already singing.

Out at Cape Point a Glaucous Gull was lording over a stinking fetid fish corpse.

Other gulls were coming close but the Glaucous was asserting total dominance.

While the Glaucous was making his dominance known, a young Great Black-backed Gull sidled up and started to steal the prize.  That's when the Battle of the Titans began.

Great Black-backed Gulls are the largest gull in North America but Glaucous Gulls are not too far behind and to me it seemed like these two were evenly matched.

They interlocked their heavy bills and began a protracted wrestling match which neither of them seemed inclined to quit.

At some points the Glaucous actually seemed to dominate....

But then the GBBG would get the upper hand.

To be honest I am not sure who won... I am pretty sure another bird snagged the prize while they were fighting.

Nice comparison of Great and Lesser Black-backed Gull.

Razorbill

Eastern Meadowlark - they also were singing already in the Campground.

I posted some audio of this one on my eBird checklist.

Next stop was at Oregon Inlet where I ran into Jeff and he got me dialed into some distant Harlequin Duck views.  The duck was hanging out on some of the remaining structure of the old Bonner Bridge almost a mile down the new bridge.  Jeff was going back north so he dropped me half way across the bridge and I was able to get some better views from the generous shoulder of the highway.

This Peregrine Falcon was not happy with me being on his stretch of bridge and gave me an earful.

Harlequin Duck - It took a little while to find him probably because the Peregrine was flying around but persistence is the key with finding birds.

After making the long walk back to the south end of the bridge I figured I would walk back to my truck on the beach and look for Snow Buntings.  No luck there but I did peep a couple common birds..

Herring Gull

Purple Sandpiper at the jetty.

My next target was a particularly photogenic Long-tailed Duck up in Corolla, but I stopped on the way up at the Oregon Inlet Fishing Center because the Gattos told me about a Long-tailed Duck there so I figured I would pick it up as an insurance policy.

Long-tailed Duck in the bank!

Bufflehead

The Long-tailed Duck in Corolla did not disappoint. 

It is in a ridiculously small retention pond just next to a shopping plaza.

I don't recall ever checking the beach out in Corolla and someone had reported a Western Grebe a couple weeks prior so I figured I would give it a shot before the long drive home.

This Red Fox was happily munching on a dead Common Loon.

The gull flocks on the beach were massive including 20-30 Lesser Black-Backed Gulls.

My rarophillia condition was kicking in and I tried to turn a young Ring-billed Gull into a California Gull.  When scanning gulls I tend to look at the legs as California gulls have different colored legs especially young ones.  Ring-billed typically have yellow legs and Herring pink.  California are in between in size and can have bluish legs and dark irises.  However, they also usually have red on the bill and are larger than Ring-billed.  I was able to push this bird over by a Herring Gull and saw it was way too small.  Thats about when I kept scanning and saw many young Ring-billed Gulls with bluish legs and dark irises.  Duh...