April Appraisals

It has been lovely of late in East NC. We have enjoyed many of those clean clear spring days that bring everyone outside, the kind that reveal neighbors you didn't even know you had. Clean is maybe an exaggeration...there's more pollen, by mass, in the air than there is water vapor right now. But who can be grumpy at flowers?? Plants just want to party too. 

Given these precious and pulchritudinous spring days, I really have not been birding as much as I should. Work called us away for one whole weekend, but afterwards we got the crew bumbling down to Cliffs of the Neuse S.P. It's a funny thing; I want my kids to get into birding and nature time, but having them in tow really restricts the time of arrival and time of departure : /

Like most of the state, Wayne Co. is experiencing drought right now. The river levels are low even if the banks are lush. So let's add drought and drought-related crop issues and sky-high fertilizer and fuel costs to the list of bad-to-worse that 2026 is coughing up. 

Most nobody likes a drought, just like most nobody appreciates rising fuel and energy costs (except CEOs of Duke Energy, Exxon Mobile, etc). However, these Skinks seem to be holding up fairly well. The Anhingas deemed the river too low to bother with despite there being no shortage of river debris for them to manakin upon.

On the Spanish Moss trail, we were peppered with a strange and spastic sentry cry. It was nothing with feathers nor a stepped-upon frog...clearly a distressed rodent of perhaps a distressed rodent-sized dog. What would make a squirrel freeze in place and vibrate out a DefCon 1 alarm?? 

Surely they weren't upset about...me!? I walk amongst the woods and leaves with the silent feet of a ballerina cat, with the grace and poise of a swan that went to French finishing school, with care and compassion for all creatures like an ecumenical Disney prince, why so distes...OH I get it...

 

This time of year is prime time for Barred Owl. Everyone's favorite dark-eyed, river-of-the-woods-loving murder machine. The FB groups doth overfloweth with photos. Everyone loves their company. So why is it embarrassing to take a Barred Owl out to dinner???

...Because it always asks to see the chef (see what I did there!?)

We also clocked several more FOY birds for the county list, including Louisiana Waterthrush and Prothonotary Warbler, on the far side of the river. The Yellow-rumped Warbler numbers have thinned considerably, but those late bloomers lingering behind are starting to bloom nicely indeed. 

Also there were Chipping Sparrows. I miss the better winter sparrow variety. I just don't like Chipping Sparrows very much. I know I know...should love all birds etc.

I don't wish them ill, but if they were a channel on Sparrow TV, it would be like the QVC channel. I would change it every time. 

For more information concerning strong and unsolicited opinions about sparrows, please read HERE

By and large, having kids in tow on a hike is ok. Having kids in tow on a bird-centered hike often is not. Every once in awhile it can be a little magical.  

Cliffs of the Neuse is probably the best place in Wayne Co. to go for a scenic hike, and it has a respectable banister of birds throughout the seasons. However, if you are looking for lots of great visuals, especially on migrant passerines, it is less than stellar. There are very few places that afford one steady, near-level views of the canopies, unlike say the ridge-line hikes abounding in the Blue Ridge.

Residential breeders are pretty apparent, but I have never had much luck here tagging birds that are just passing through. Like anyone else on a lay-over, they're just eager to use the bathroom and cram some junk food between flights, and aren't looking to make friends along the way. 

The b*tch of it is if you're doing some kind of birding competition, even if nobody asked you too (yo!), picking up migrants is essential, and I am not able to contravene a $150 Million government plane w/  to do so (though at least I haven't been fired either).

On an annual basis, one can be fairly confident in picking up all the residential (breeding or wintering) species with enough attempts in the right habitat (though public access to said habitat is not something to be taken for granted in Wayne Co). Migrant traps are the difference maker, areas that offer suitable habitat but condensed and scaled down for rapid scanning by avian twitchers. 

If the passerine migrants are 50 feet in the air and largely silent amongst dense canopy, your odds of randomly looking up at the right time and spotting that Cape May Warbler are paltry.

Or maybe I am just bitter and under-developed because I cut my teeth birding the low scrub and wadis of Arizona. Sometimes things can be two things.

At any rate, the wastewater treatment plant trades in the vertical space for horizontal space, albeit with more open views and habitat variety. Not too many spots can boast Green Heron and Turkey as neighbors.

It is also about the only public land you can find waterfowl of a species type that doesn't rhyme with "scormorcant." There were multiple clutches of Wood Duck this past week, complete with protective mothers doing their injury-imitating flap swim like an aqueous Killdeer. It did not fool me...but neither did I eat all her ducklings, so as far as she is concerned, it worked.

By category, shorebirds are the best way to add some bulk to a species list, if not so much to the Crush List. The GWWTP was good for Least Sandpiper, Solitary Sandpiper, Spotted Sandpiper, and the two Yellowlegs cousins. Poking along the Neuse shoreline I was pleasantly surprised to find Solitary and Spotted sandpipers again. Mudflats and tidal areas are precious hard to come by here. If you came to this blog hoping to see distant, grainy, barely-diagnostic shots of expected waders and peeps, you have come to the right place!

I have a soft spot for Spotted Sandpipers, a spot on my heart, you might say. They're readily recognizable by size, habit, and plumage throughout the year, and they turn up in odd areas. They're the least snobby for habitat of their type, (except for Killdeer of course) and they like to get down. Females will lay multiple egg clutches and leave different males to do the incubating. This polyandry is the secret to their success, that and being cute.

This would have been a really nice shot of some random bamboo shoots if that pesky blurry FOY Blue Grosbeak and Eastern Bluebird weren't ruining it : ::sigh:: : C'est la vie.

Not usually, but sometimes Parulas act like Cuckoos. Why do they trill like insects when other Warblers warbled? I would be curious to read up theories on the auditory divergence and evolution of these types of birds. Did the early Parula ancestors just spend lots of time with Cicadas during their formative years? 

Hooded and Prothonotary (which autocorrect likes to change to 'Probationary,' by the way) Warblers are now fairly common in the right habitats. I have never turned up Swainson's or Worm-eating at the Cliffs, but have found Kentucky on occasion. Bet we can land those others as well. Maybe the problem is my eyes are dilated from spending too much time with yonder swamp candles.

A lay-up counts the same as a slam dunk; a 2 yard TD scramble the same as an 80-yard hail mary. In competitive birding, as in sports, a tick for a cool bird counts the same as a House Sparrow. The species count has definitely swelled in the last few weeks. There were calling FOY Yellow-billed Cuckoo and the warm-weather Vireos sp. with their various colored eyes. No flycatchers and thrushes yet but good ol' Eastern Phoebe is here. All Phoebes are good Phoebe's, but Eastern is the most boring by far.

Given other plans and obligations, it will probably be more than a month before returning the Cliffs of the Neuse. Growing that Wayne list will require targeted missions for specific species - nocturnals, liminal grasslands species, daring daylight raids of the local emu farm, etc. It's just tough because knowing Proths are around, and then not coming home after crushing some Proths...it feels like a wasted day.

On the podium! Place your Kalshi and Polymarket bets now.