I really appreciated the information that Larry
Schwitters and Penny Koyama recently posted on Alaska birding. Those
posts are keepers, which I hope to use in the next year. I did a two-
week trip to North Carolina in May and thought others might be
interested in impressions and information. It?s probably not a state
that is on a birder?s radar such as Florida, Texas, or Arizona.
Nevertheless, it is a beautiful state with four major habitat zones,
five if you count pelagic birding, and lots of possibilities. The
zones would be the mountains, the Piedmont, the tidewater region, the
barrier islands, and the Atlantic.

Where do you start a birding trip to North Carolina?
According to an Edmonds birding buddy, the Great Dismal Swamp
National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia. It?s just across the state
line, it?s huge (110,000 acres), it?s lush, and is a great place to
get the bird I didn?t get, Swainson?s Warbler. It breeds there.
Flying into Norfolk is easy and it happened to be quite inexpensive.
The airport is relatively new and overbuilt for the six carriers that
use it. That meant lots of elbow room and little hassle. The rental
car was also cheap. Perhaps Norfolk does not have the 20% rental car
tax that the Houston airport charges.

Suffolk, the home of Planter Peanuts and the
"birthplace" of Mr. Peanut, is the gateway town for the Great Dismal
Swamp. It has a variety of inexpensive motels and restaurants. So
that?s where I stayed both my first and last nights because it is
also only about half an hour from the airport.

The next morning a 20 minute drive took us to the
Jericho Ditch on the refuge. This is a nine-mile trail/road through
the swamp that produced three life birds right away: Great Crested
Flycatcher, Prairie Warbler, and Prothonotary Warbler. This is a
swamp. It could be a very buggy place. The mosquitoes could be
quite nasty. We were in tick country. In May the mosquitoes are out
but they aren?t terribly aggressive. The swamp trails are wide enough
that you don't have to brush against vegetation and collect ticks.
It was doable. We pushed on down the road to the refuge
headquarters. We walked an interpretive trail through pine woods and
picked up Red-headed Woodpecker and Pine Warbler. Before the day was
half over we had five life birds.

A helpful member of the refuge staff encouraged us to
return to Washington Ditch and take the boardwalk to the back where
there were stands of American holly. She explained that this had
been a banner year for Swainson?s Warblers and we would be sure to
find one. She told us they are ventriloquists so not to look for
them where we heard their song. The trick was to look midway out
holly branches that were at about eye level. It was 1 p.m. We
walked the boardwalk twice and never heard the Swainson?s song nor
saw any sign of them. They had been seen the previous weekend but we
suspected that they were now on their nests and not vocalizing. The
Prothonotary Warblers made up for it. They are loud, in your face
for a warbler, and seemingly everywhere on the refuge.

By 3 o?clock we were on our way to Raleigh where our
BirdingPal contact, Alex planned to show us some of his favorite
places the next morning. We met Alex at 7 a.m. at his apartment near
Lake Johnson where we immediately saw our first Chimney Swifts. Fish
Crows were also heard passing overhead. Lake Johnson is a 150-acre
lake surrounded by 300 acres of forest and is part of the Raleigh
Parks & Recreation Department. Our principal destination that
morning was the Mason Farm Biological Preserve in Chapel Hill. It is
360 acres of woods and fields with a two-mile loop and one of the
metro area?s hot spots. Here we were able to find Worm-eating
Warbler, American Redstart, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Acadian Flycatcher,
Ovenbird, Northern Parula, Magnolia Warbler, Red-shouldered Hawk, and
more Prothonotary Warblers, among others.

We finished the morning at Historic Yates Mill County
Park in Raleigh where we found Carolina Wren and Brown-headed
Nuthatch, among others. All three of us were heading to western
North Carolina that afternoon with the N.C. Museum of Natural
Sciences for a mountain birding weekend (May 14-16). We bought our
provisions at the local Whole Foods and then dashed to the site where
we would get the bus to Boone.

Four museum staffers were on this field trip. Wake Audubon
cosponsored the trip. For $50 each, we got the 5-hour bus trip
(round trip) and two talented museum ornithologists. We got a group
rate in a Boone motel and spent the next day and a half birding at
Moses Cone Memorial Park, Valle Crucis Community Park, a pass between
Rich and Snake Mountains, and E.B. Jeffress Park. We were in the
vicinity of the Blue Ridge Parkway for most of the weekend.


With all the local knowledge brought to this mountain
weekend, we picked up Black-throated Blue Warbler, Blue-headed Vireo,
Chestnut-sided Warbler, Canada Warbler, Hooded Warbler, Northern
Waterthrush, Eastern Wood ?Pewee, Field Sparrow, Broad-winged Hawk,
Black Poll Warbler, and had great views of Bobolinks and Grasshopper
Sparrow. Other possible life birds were heard but could not be
enticed to come out for a view so we did not count them. An
advantage of mountain birding is the absence of ticks. The Piedmont
is another story. Take bug juice and do daily tick checks.

Back in Raleigh, I picked up Eastern Screech Owl and
Louisiana Waterthrush at the William B. Umstead State Park and paid
the price with a rainy day of birding. This nearly 6,000-acre
natural area has 20 miles of trails, three small lakes, and several
miles of creeks.

The most reliable site in North Carolina for Swainson?s
Warbler is the Howell Woods Environmental Learning Center, about an
hour southeast of Raleigh and owned by Johnston Community College.
Other target birds there are Kentucky Warbler and Mississippi Kite.
I should have seen both warblers on a trail called Warbler Way,
according to staff. Dipped. By May 18th these lowland breeders were
probably on their nests. If the sky had not been low overcast and
the temperature cool, I was assured I would have seen the kites. But
staff told me they don?t fly unless it?s warm enough for lots of
dragonfly activity, one of their preferred food sources. It wasn?t.
But staff opened gates and let me drive as far back as I could toward
the Neuse River where I walked trails and fields. I contented myself
with lots of Field Sparrows, Indigo Buntings, and Brown Thrashers.

I continued southeast to Wilmington where I ticked
Painted Bunting at Carolina Beach State Park, the most reliable site
for that species. Just north of Wilmington is Holly Shelter Game
Land, one of the best state sites for Red-cockaded Woodpecker. I saw
lots of nest cavities and eventually spotted three of these
woodpeckers around one nest tree. Holly Shelter is also known for
producing Bachman?s Sparrow. I dipped on that but finally ticked a
male Yellow-throated Warbler so I left happy. A great shorebird site
near Wilmington is Mason Inlet Waterbird Management Area, owned by
New Hanover County and managed by Audubon NC. There were lots of
Black Skimmers, Least Terns, Wilson?s Plovers, and Red Knots.

I spent several days working my way through the
tidewater region, being captivated by the cypress swamps, back roads,
and charming small towns with four hundred years of history. There
are lots of national and state wildlife areas along what is known as
the Charles Kuralt Trail.

The penultimate leg of the trip was the Outer Banks and
two days of pelagic birding with Brian Patteson?s company out of
Hatteras. Atlantic pelagic birding does not appear to be as
bountiful as Pacific pelagic trips, but we had wonderful marine
mammal sightings, including a breaching hump-backed whale that was
the classic calendar photo. We had good views of all three jaegers,
a number of shearwaters, lots of Wilson?s Storm-Petrels with a few
Band-rumpeds thrown in, and even an Arctic Tern. We saw Black-capped
Petrel, one of the three possible pteradomas.

The Outer Banks have considerable development but
Roanoke Island is almost entirely the Pea Island National Wildlife
Refuge and is a must-stop on any trip to the Outer Banks.

For those birding in North Carolina, a few hours in the
Natural Sciences Museum in downtown Raleigh can really enhance the
trip. Admission is free and it's open every day of the week. Some
of the resources for planning a trip include the recently published
three North Carolina Birding Trail books: the Coastal Plain Trail
Guide, the Piedmont Trail Guide, and the Mountain Trail Guide. They
are available for purchase from www.ncbirdingtrail.org. The older
(1994) A Birder?s Guide to Coastal North Carolina by John Fussell is
still considered an authoritative and detailed reference. Birding
North Carolina (Falcon Guide 2005) by the Carolina Bird Club is also
available. While we did not use it or buy it, the Carolina Bird Club
is the official ornithological society for both North and South
Carolina, so it should be a decent field guide.

Keep in mind that Great Dismal Swamp is now offering a
birding festival the second weekend of May. It is probably the best
opportunity to see the elusive Swainson?s Warbler. You can research
it at this link: www.fws.gov/northeast/greatdismalswamp/. May
mountain birding trips can be checked out at http://
naturalsciences.org. If you are interested in pelagic birding, Brian
Patteson offers quality trips out of Hatteras. See www.patteson.com.

Carol Riddell
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