Several months ago I was asked to lead a trip for the upcoming Carolina Bird Club meeting in Carteret County and I love Shackleford Banks so I signed up for that one. I was able to wrangle Trevor S to co-lead the trip with me. Fast forward to the week of the trip and this was the forecast:
Basically it was saying that we would have rain for the whole time! The trip was scheduled to leave on the 10am ferry and come back at 3pm. Rain and low temperatures on an island that has zero cover is kind of a bad idea. Especially when you consider some participants may be elderly and more vulnerable to things like pneumonia. The good news is everything actually turned out alright! But before I get to that part of the post, I am just going to finish up some pics from the 16th because my last post was corrupted while I wrote it and I had to publish it prematurely before I lost everything.
So here are some photos from Ashley HS Ponds where I left off in the last post.
Mallard - one of the most ubiquitous and consequently under appreciated ducks in the world.
Snowy Egret sporting some nice black and yellow leggings.
Great Egret emitting out a mighty bellows that almost knocked me off my feet.
Turkey Vultures love this area because of the many high roosting spots and they also drink at the pond. When you eat roadkill all day, you need to wash it down with something.
Sand Live Oak - my iNat submission for the day.
The Wiki entry on these oaks is relatively anaemic compared to its big brother the Southern Live Oak. Sand Live Oaks tend to thrive in sandier habitats (duh!) and are scrubby and grow in thickets. The leaves are more revolute than Souther Live Oak. This means the leaves curl downward at the edges making the leaf more boat-like if you flip them over.
Black Vulture - they also like Ashley HS Ponds for the same reasons as the Turkeys.
Gadwall is the most common duck at this pond most of the time which is strange because they are not too plentiful elsewhere.
Wilson's Snipe - usually it is hard finding these skulkers but I saw it fly and put down so I knew where to look.
White Ibis
On Friday, I was able to finish up work by the early afternoon and decided to head up and spend the night in Morehead City so I wouldn't have to drive very early the next morning.
The evening light was pretty good when I was driving by the Holly Shelter Gamelands entrance so I decided to pop in and try my luck. It took a little white to find my quarry, but once I did they were very confiding.
Nice Bokeh!
Another TV! This is a TV I can watch all day.
Longleaf Pine - I remembered late in the day that I hadn't done my iNat submission for the day so this important tree of Holly Shelter was a good choice.
These beauties are essential in providing the habitat that RCWPs and Bachman's Sparrows thrive in.
In the morning, I woke up early and put on some Dominik Eulberg.
That's a mouthful!
My older brother sent me a text about this guy and I gave it a try and now it is on my Pandora rotation. Check out this guy's website: https://m.dominik-eulberg.de/en/interviews/birdwatcher-by-day-and-by-night/
One of the interesting comments on Spotify is that Dominik Eulberg is responsible for reconciling birding and techno music. I didn't even know they were at odds! Try it and you will see maybe you previously gave techno a pass prematurely. Its great music for getting amped up for a hard-core birding session! Im kind of kidding, but also not.
My first stop in the morning was at someone's house in Morehead City who let me see their resident Bullock's Oriole. He let me park my car in between two feeders and I didn't have to wait long.
Bullock's Oriole!
An Orange-crowned Warbler stopped by too.
A short drive later, I arrived to the Harker's Island Ferry terminal and immediately began looking for the Snow Bunting which has been hanging around. It didn't take long to find because many of the tour participants were providing extra eyes.
Snow Bunting!
Very nice to have this outside of Dare County.
We boarded the ferry and I was pleased that we only had 10 or so participants as it would be easier to keep an eye on everyone. However, all my fears were unfounded. All the participants ended up being good sports and mostly dressed appropriately for the rain. My other fear was that we wouldn't find the specialty bird of East Shackleford which is the Long-billed Curlew. Marty W had led the same tour the day before and they didn't have any, although Marty said he was looking at pictures later and noticed there was at least one in the distance.
My initial plan was to start on the inside of the island and do a counter-clockwise loop ending at the south beach on the high tide. However, the tide was already higher than I expected and we couldn't cross the first little channel that would take us to the marshes. So we changed plans and started on the beach in a clockwise motion.
After quite a slog down the beach in some slight drizzle we made it to a nice group of shorebirds but the photo ops were limited as they were quite distant and scope views were best.
Red Knots were probably the best bird and a wintering Wilson's Plover (not the one in above picture which is a Semi) was nice too. I didn't take a pic of the Wilson's because I knew I would get those later on my beloved Mason Inlet. We also had a Great Cormorant in the distance which some participants liked.
A Merlin ended our beach party and we headed across the dunes into the marsh.
This is where the rain really started up so my pictures are not great, but I was smart enough to be the only person with an umbrella which made looking in the scope for our target bird more comfortable.
Bingo! Long-billed Curlew - I spotted them in the distance and got the group to follow me quickly to a better viewing spot where everyone got great looks at not one, but three LBCUs! Hooray!
There were plenty of Marbled Godwits too, but I couldn't find any Bar-tailed. I bet it might still be out there, but it was difficult looking through the thousands of shorebirds in the rain.
Some of the LBCUs came quite close at one point.
Whimbrels stayed further away but I still got some passable shots.
Whimbrel
It really started to rain hard at this point so I asked everyone if they would be up to leave early and they all were so I called the ferry and they came to pick us up with no delays.. All in all, it was a very successful trip!
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