Back in NC (17-Feb - 08Mar2025)

For my wife, coming home from a trip abroad is one of the best parts.  She likes to travel, but she also loves being home.  For me, its always a bit disappointing.  I just love seeing new things and that is hard to do in NC.  My iNat resolution has been coming undone but I am still trying to find new plants to identify anyway.  Finding new plants to identify at my most frequently visited winter birding location is even more tough as there are only a handful of different plants at Mason Inlet.

Carolina Sea Lavender also known as Seaside Thrift - there isn't much on Wiki about this one other than it is frequently cut in the late summer for floral arrangements.

This is what the spent flowers look like.

Marsh Hay Cordgrass or Salt Hay or Saltmeadow Cordgrass

Per Wiki - "Saltmeadow Cordgrass marshes serve as pollution filters and as buffers against flooding and shoreline erosion. During the colonial era, towns scattered from Narragansett Bay to the Gulf of Maine were often settled based on their proximity to salt marshes due to the importance of saltmeadow cordgrass for fodder. It was harvested for bedding and fodder for farm animals and for garden mulch. Before hay was baled and stored under cover, it was used to top the hay stacks in the fields."

Back at home, I am realizing most of the flowers that grow in my yard are not native even when I did not plant them.  

This House Holly Fern is growing in one of my beds and I know I didn't plant it.  I do see it around in the neighborhood so I guess it is spreading naturally.

The underside of the leaves.

The Lesser Black-backed Gulls at Mason Inlet are increasing in numbers and seem to outnumber the Herring Gulls lately.

But the Dunlin can outnumber all of them.

Get your fill of Forster's Terns now because they will start to be replaced by Common, Least and Royal Terns soon.

Black-belled Plover - this one looks a bit dumpy.

A group of American White Pelicans flew overhead at Mason Inlet.

American Oystercatcher - always a crowd pleaser.

Short-billed Dowitcher

Northern Harrier

Meanwhile down at Fort Fisher.....

Cedar Waxwings abound.  Some have yellow-tipped tails.

And some have red-tipped tails.

Orange-crowned Warbler

You don't normally get to see the orange crown.

Red-headed Woodpecker - looking a little ratty.

Blue Jay - an undeservedly under-appreciated bird.

At the pier on the Air Force base at Fort Fisher, I was scanning the water and found these two Common Goldeneye.

Common Goldeneye pair waaaaayyyyy out..  I decided that if the weather held up I would bring out my kayak the next day.  It's not often that you see a drake Goldeneye in NC.

Common Goldeneye!  It took a long time to locate it and then it was very difficult to get close as all the ducks were flushing.  This was the best I could do.

I ended up kayaking several miles to find the Goldeneye and my back was killing me, but it was worth it.

The Laughing Gulls are starting to look good again.

As are the Ringers.

Piping Plovers always look good.

Largeleaf Pennywort!

Maritime Bluestem - I guess the stems are bluish in the summer.

A closer look....

I finally got enough motivation built up to make the trek to see the continuing Brewer's Blackbird that Ron M found up in Franklin County.  It was good to get some decent pics of a bird I have seen a few times in NC but never managed a good pic of.  

After picking up this beauty I decided to head over to the VOA in Bear Grass to try my luck on Short-eared Owls.  They have been seen in the daylight there over the past few months and I still don't have a decent photo of one.  I got there shortly after lunch and it was pretty dead.

It was hard to even find some Savannah Sparrows which was weird because this spot is full of them.

But as the sun started to set, things got more active.

Short-eared Owl at about 4pm and way off in the distance.

Unfortunately it never got very close and all my shots were super cropped and speed blurred.

There distances were so huge that each time I moved closer it would move before I could get close, not in response to me, as I was still almost half a mile away, but just because it was actively hunting.

Trevor joined me at this point and we saw more in the distance but they never did get close.

Loggerhead Shrike

Northern Harrier - these were the shots I was hoping to get of the owls.

Meanwhile back home I kept my efforts up of trying to find the Heermann's Gull which has been sighted in Florida, the OBX and now up at Lea Hutaff Island just north of Mason Inlet.  That bird gets around.

Virginia Glasswort.

The Japanese Camelias at Airlie are in full bloom now.

Winter Daphne - Airlie has lots of Asian plants.

Carolina Laurelcherry - and some natives thankfully!

I suppose I will keep my year list going for a little white but I am already out of the running for a big year as I am 20-30 birds off the mark of the record year.  There are a few birds I could pick up if I wanted to take a drive but so far my motivation for long drives is low.

Vive la France Part Deux (11-14Feb2025)

Everything after visiting the Camargue was the cheery on top a nice work trip to France.  Oh but what a nice cherry!  The next day after some much needed sleep, I had the first half of the day free as my colleagues started to filter into the hotel for an evening dinner.  The weather actually turned out to be mostly free of rain which was not in the forecast.  Actually it was raining in Cannes, but I saw that the Cap D'Antibes was kind of sticking out into the Mediterranean and seemed to be keeping out of the rain shadow.  So I jumped in an Uber and was there 15 minutes later.

When I did some research on some of the birds I could lifer from in Cannes, the Yelkouan Shearwater was high on the list.  This little Audubon's/Sargasso lookalike can be seen working the waters close to land. The Sentier du Littoral is a great trail around the Cap D'Antibes starting at Billionaire's Bay on one side and finishing in the town of Antibes on the other.  Its nickname is "Tire-poil" which means hair-pull on account of the consistent winds here.  However, it was nice and calm for the most part while I was there.

Billionaire's Bay was gorgeous.  The cool thing here is that most of the mega-mansions are set back a little from the coast which leaves the trail going around the peninsula relatively wild and rugged.

First bird I saw here was a lifer, a small flock of Crag Martins were circling and I tried to photograph them but realized I had the wrong autofocus setting on.  By the time I switched from spot focus, they had gone!  Don't worry dear readers, I got some later in the trip.

European Shag 

European Robin

Great Cormorant

Yellow-legged Gull is the most common gull here other than Black-headed.

Mastic - I remembered to submit my daily iNat entries while here and also made up for some missed ones over the past couple days.  This is an important plant in the Mediterranean providing food in the form of seeds and berries for local fauna.  The sap of the Mastic tree or shrub has been collected as far back as Roman times for use as chewing gum!  Who knew that chewing gum was so old.  I guess back in the old days, breath fresheners were even more important than they are now with the lack of good oral hygiene back then.

Mediterranean Buckthorn - similarly another important local plant with seeds and berries for local fauna.  It was introduced in Australia and has become invasive there.

Tree Medick - Another Mediterranean native.  Either I was really lucky in picking natives or they are very careful to keep only natives on this trail because I was not finding any invasive or exotics.

As I worked around the trail, the wind picked up and I started scanning the sea for Shearwaters.  I know they like wind because the wind creates an upwelling of nutrients which brings bait to the surface.

Yellow-legged Gull

Yelkouan Shearwaters!!

They were pretty far off shore but I took a zillion photos and some turned out okay.

I sifted through the hundreds of Black-headed Gulls to look for a Mediterranean Gull but was not successful.  It would have been tough at that distance anyhow.

Sandwich Tern

This guy sailed right through the flock and probably got eye-popping looks at the shearwaters and I bet he didn't even know how lucky he was.

Hooded Crow!

I took a bunch of photos of first and second cycle gulls hoping to check through them later for something interesting but they all turned out to just be more Yellow-legged Gulls.

Or Black-headed Gulls.

Common Kingfisher - usually these are hard to photograph but this one had nowhere to hide.

My luck ran out and it started to rain pretty hard so I called an Uber.

Stone Pine - a native pine tree in this area of the Mediterranean.  This particular day was basically a work day.  I did head out on the Croisette which is basically the boardwalk in Cannes to look for Mediterranean Gulls but dipped again.

Melissa arrived that evening and she was wrecked from her red-eye flight so she got some room service and went to bed early.  The hotel comped us a bottle of wine because of some trouble with noise the first night, but we didn't have an opportunity to drink it.  While she slept, I had a Gala dinner with my work colleagues and then tried to play the social game as long as I could before turning in for the night.

The next day I had a half day of work then Melissa and I took an Uber to a local park in the hills above Cannes.

It was a gorgeous day and we had plenty of birds but most of them remained hidden.  Birds in this area are very wary and rarely perch out in the open.  I later spoke with my uncle about this and he said that there is a long history of hunting of songbirds in this part of the world and the fauna has adapted.   I also noted that pishing doesn't work at all.  This makes getting photos very difficult.

These hills were absolutely covered with yellow blooms.  It turns out January through February is a great time to visit because this is when the mimosa trees are in bloom.  Actually they are not mimosas at all but many of the locals call them that based on an erroneous classification issue many years ago.  These are actually Acacia trees from Australia.

Long-leaf Wattle - this plant is an invasive and in fact almost all of the trees and shrubs in this park seemed to be invasive.

Silver Wattle - these Acacias also are an invasive from Australia and they actually look more like mimosas but again are not.

Melissa loves Eucalyptus trees mainly because she loves southern California but also because of the uniquely patterned bark.  These of course are also invasive from Australia.

Common Chiffchaff hanging out in a Silver Wattle.

Long-tailed Tit

Melissa dwarfed by the "mimosa" trees.

Firecrest!

Rose-ringed Parakeet

Friday we had a whole day to ourselves.  We got a bit of a late start after a delicious breakfast and walked down to the port to catch a ferry to Ile Sainte-Marguerite.  This is the largest of the Lerins Islands and is home to Fort Royal where the Man in the Iron Mask was imprisoned.  I will need to watch that movie again because I forget the premise.  

Cannes from the water.

Common Chaffinch 

Holm Oak - these towering oaks have leaves like hollies when young.  These are native to the Mediterranean.

Laurustinus Viburnum - this one is a native.

I thought I had one of the Eurasian falcons when I saw this but turns out they have Peregrines here and the other falcons are migrants that hadn't started coming through yet.

Yellow-legged Gull sitting on the Fort Royal ramparts.

I was really excited when I saw this thrush-like bird thinking maybe I had a Blue Rock Thrush, but it turned out to be a female Black Redstart...

I saw multiple Eurasian Blackcaps on the island but they all stayed hidden.

It was a beautiful day and I definitely recommend the trip if you are in Cannes.

Sunset from the Croisette on our way to dinner.

It was awesome to see my Aunt and my mom's best friend for dinner.  

For Saturday, we planned a long hike from the village of Theoule-sur-Mer to some mountainside peaks that offer a great view of the coast.  We grabbed an Uber but in hindsight we totally could have taken the train.

The hike up was gorgeous.  Pictures don't do it justice.  You can see the snow covered Alps in the distance.

We didn't plan the matching hats, it just happened.

Lots of Cork Oaks up here.

The scenery looked more like the American Southwest than France.

Crag Martin!!

Goldcrest!

Crested Tit!!  This was the last bird of the trip and a lifer!  

On the way down...

That night we celebrated with my uncle, cousin and niece at a nice restaurant off the Croisette.  It was so nice to reconnect with my European family.  Unfortunately I neglected to take a photo.

That wraps up my European work/vacation trip.  Tune in for some NC birds soon.