This past weekend was spent visiting some of the counties that don't seem to get any love from a birding perspective. To give you an idea, Samson County appears to have only 6 birding hotspots in eBird and the one with the most birds is Weeks Park in Newton Grove with only 78 species. The other spots seem to be random spots that people birded on a roadside!
As a comparison Airlie Gardens in my home county has 239 species and Fort Fisher Spit has 278!
Much of the reason for that is habitat but lots of it is also the fact that people just don't bird Sampson County very hard. This is despite Sampson county being the 2nd largest county in NC at 944 square miles which is 4 times larger than New Hanover!
First some pics from during the week....
On Monday Melissa took a nice walk on the south end of Wrightsville with me.
Razorbills were working the rip right at the southern tip.
The American Oystercatchers seem to already be claiming territory for nesting.
Bonaparte's Gull
Another day also at the south end there were a couple Great Cormorants on the rocks.
Meanwhile at the north end, the gull flocks have been getting huge.
Thousands of gulls come streaming in from the dump inland and the ocean side as well. Unfortunately they all stay over at Figure 8 Island because of all the dog walkers at Wrightsville.
I have been diligently scanning for white-winged gulls (Glaucous or Iceland) with no luck.
Saturday was going to be raining and crappy weather but I had to wake up super early (5am) to bring George to a parking lot in town to hand him off to some friends for his regatta in Charleston so I figured why not take advantage and keep driving.
My first stop would be the aforementioned Weeks Park in Newton Grove, Sampson County.
Even though it's the second largest county, there are only 63k people in it. Its mostly farm land with basically no gamelands or state parks. I neglected to take pics in Weeks Park. It's basically a small postage stamp park with a ball field and some Basketball courts, nothing crazy interesting and somewhat sad for Sampson that this was the best hotspot. I hadn't planned to visit Johnston County but I was now very close to one of my favorite places in NC, Howell Woods! So I decided to head over and see what it was like in the winter. In the spring it comes alive with breeding species like Wood Thrushes and Kentucky Warblers. In the winter apparently its all about the Fox Sparrows!
On the way I stopped at some fields near some of the historic Battlefields in the area and picked up a flock of American Pipits but it was raining and they were pretty far out. For you Civil War buffs, here is a link about the famous Bentonville Battlefield which is in this area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentonville_Battlefield
This kind of history doesn't really interest me much. Johnston County is more populous than Sampson with over 200k people and it is 790 square miles which makes it the 10th largest county. I suppose the reason it is more populous is its proximity to Raleigh and also the fact that it straddles Interstate 95.
I was mainly focusing my time in the lower parts, but will probably head further north later in the year.
Howell Woods Environmental Learning Center is a bit of a misnomer because they are constantly having hunting in there and they cordon off the areas when hunts are on and I rarely see any learning activities going on. That being said, it still is an amazing tract of land with some great big hardwoods and successional habitat. It's owned and run by Johnston County Community College.
https://www.johnstoncc.edu/howellwoods/
When I pulled up it was very quiet from a human standpoint and the rain had mostly stopped.
I couldn't believe how many Fox Sparrows were hanging around the parking area.
But I was there to take a walk so off I went.
This Bigfoot cut out was strategically placed behind some trees so when I finally caught it in my peripheral vision it actually succeeded in making me jump.
There wasn't anything else of note except some other common sparrows and woodpeckers. So I hit the road again and started driving in the general direction of Wayne County. It didn't take long for me to find some more farm fields with some Pipit activity.
Finding Pipits actually isn't that easy. As you can see from this uncropped shot, it would be easy to miss Pipits in this field unless you study it closely.
American Pipit - once I found them I parked on the side of the road and waited for them to come to me. It was starting to rain again so I was happy to sit in the car and watch/wait.
Many of the farm fields in the area had a purple blanket of flowers which was quite stunning. This picture underwhelms but you get the idea.
In Mount Olive I stopped at a small park in the middle of town and watched from the truck as common birds flew around.
Mount Olive is a town in Wayne County near the border of Duplin County. They are most famous for their pickles and pickle festival!
https://www.mtolivepickles.com/
Luke used to love these pickles so the label is very familiar to me. I will have to visit the pickle festival this year. Looks like it is in April.
Wayne County is the 30th largest county in NC and has over 100k people mainly thanks to Goldsboro which is a fairly large town. I will probably head back sometime soon as Goldsboro has a decent wastewater treatment plant with some good birds.
My final planned county for the day was Duplin County.
Duplin county is the 9th largest county in NC at 816 square miles and has about 60k people in it. When I research hotspots in eBird I found a park called Cabin Lake State Park near Beulaville. It was still raining but I had an umbrella and I like exploring parks when there are no people around.
I set off on the 2 plus mile walk around Cabin Lake and never ran into another person the whole time!
The trail was a little squishy but I had some knee high boots to keep me dry.
There were some nice bridges over creeks and oxbows on the lake.
I was having a good time despite low bird activity. I got an alert of a Heermann's Gull at Caswell Beach, NC which was about an hour and a half away but an hour closer to home. At first I decided I would pass because I had the state first Heermann's Gull last year at Wrightsville and I didn't think it was worth chasing this one for a county tick.
So I finished my walk at a leisurely pace but then got hungry and visited a local taco place in Beulaville and got myself a Torta. By the time I was back on the road it was 1:30pm and I decided that I may as well head to Caswell Beach while I listed to a podcast. I had nothing better to do on a rainy Saturday as I can't really work in the yard when its raining.
When I arrived at Caswell Beach, I ran into Ricky D, Trevor S and Bob C just getting ready to leave. They had been looking for a while where the Heermann's was last seen with no luck. So we decided to split up and head in opposite directions. Ricky went further east down the beach and Trevor, Bob and I drove over to the Yaupon Pier in Oak Island which is about a mile west from Caswell.
Plenty of Red-throated Loons were swimming around and there were tons of Gannets and Pelicans fishing.
I finally spotted the Heermann's about a couple hundred yards out in the ocean and alerted Bob and Trevor and called Ricky.
It took off from the water with a Great Black-backed Gull friend and flew west along the beach. Luckily it touched down on the beach and when Ricky joined us we walked down to get some closer looks.
Every couple minutes it would go out and join the pelicans trying to get some craps but it would circle again and land next to his GBBG friend. It really looked as though they were some kind of odd couple.
High fives all around. This was a NC bird for Ricky and Trevor and Bob.
Not a bad Saturday despite the rain but only a couple year birds for me.
Sunday was uneventful but beautiful so I stayed home and worked all day in the yard. I have been neglecting it lately so it needed a lot of love. I am starting to get my spring garden ready for planting. I probably will wait one more week to clear any chance of a frost.
Larry Birds at 25 counties down and 75 to go! That's 25% done for those of you a little rusty on math.
What's next??
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