2022 Starts with a Bang (01Jan2022)

What better way to start a new year than with a Christmas Bird Count!  The New Hanover count just happened to kick off on 01Jan.  The potential of a good bird is always there, but really it just feels good to do something for citizen science while birding with no aim other than counting everything you see.  My count area was the Northeast side of Carolina Beach so I started at CB Lake.

My first photographed bird of the year was a Cooper's Hawk which was keeping the passerine count low near the lake.  The posture of this bird almost seems good for Sharp-shinned but I got a good look and it was pretty large.

Great Egret

This Little Blue Heron was hunting a a random retention pond behind a supermarket.  

After my area, I volunteered to go try for the Loggerhead Shrike at Ashley HS.

White Ibis

Bingo!  Loggerhead Shrike.  This bird looks to be one of the long-time residents that are banded. 

I was trying to sneak up on some Wilson's Snipe when Sam called and gave me a heads up that a White Wagtail was found on Eagle Island just across the Cape Fear.  Eagle Island is an amazing spoil island maintained by the Corps of Engineers sitting just west of downtown Wilmington and south of the Battleship tourist attraction. Technically it includes the area around the Battleship too.  It's a bird magnet, but unfortunately the impoundments are off limits in a fenced area.  We have had access to it only for one day each year on the Christmas Bird Count.  Luckily I was close enough to take advantage and get in before the count was complete.

The bird was way over on the western berm a good couple of miles from the parking lot.

White Wagtail of the European race which lacks the black eye-line of the Siberian or Kamchatka races.

It had a little wound on its left side.  I bet it's still there but considering the island is off limits 364 days of the year, we will not know until next year.  For those of you thinking about a stealth mission, be prepared to get arrested as it is closely patrolled and people have been arrested before.