Party On, Wayne...

Behold! A pristine swampy creek no more than 2 miles from home. What's not to love!? The total and utter lack of bird life..? Ok fair point. But a pretty spot is a pretty spot (just ask anyone with freckles).

My main focus this year will be birding close to home and/or in Wayne County. Gone are the days of 2 a.m. departures and 8 hours in the car to chase a 5 minute vagrant experience. I am responsible now! 

However, I recently perused the eBird records and discovered that the All Time record for Wayne County is a CRAZY 287, nearly 100 more than the next 10-12 people in line, including Butler's Birds. It is far higher than one could hope to catch in sub-decade timeframes. 

Well done, Eric Dean.

Butler's Birds knows when to admit defeat...it just doesn't know when to die, so we'll put that on the back-burner and focus on year lists and, you know, general love of birding, being out in the rough, etc.

so rough...

The struggle for one balancing work and parenthood (and steady birding) in Wayne, NC, is that apart from the Cliffs of the Neuse State Park, and The Goldsboro Wastewater Treatment Plant, there are very few public spaces that have the terrain to support more than your standard backyard species. 

I took for granted, living in Phoenix, the number of parks and dives and greenways that could all yield 30+ species in an hour, in mixed habitats, and existed around my daily commutes. 

Wayne Co. itself is close enough to the coast that is can get occasional vagrants and storm-riders, no doubt, but you need to know where to go and be able to go on a moment's notice to get the kind of outlier numbers needed for #1 slot.

Some of us are still just...how you say..."blinking at the ass-ends of Towhees."

We're in the calm middle of migration now. The wintering sparrows, shorebirds, and waterfowl have largely moved on, while the passerines are just arriving. Pine and Palm Warblers stick around through winter. Northern Parulas and Yellow-throated Warblers are present as early as mid-March. Ovenbirds start hitting in April and add significantly to the woodland soundtrack at places like Cliffs of the Neuse.

CONSP is a good 20 - 25 drive away from anywhere else one needs to be Monday through Friday though, so what can be done with a lunch-break amount of time?

How about birding the washout behind the cemetery behind the Food Lion??

Eh...good for cardinals and sparrows and lots and lots of fake flowers that will take 10,000 years to disintegrate. Not so great for boosting county and year lists, unless you are recording hobo camps.

The birdiest spot in Wayne Co, in terms of species recorded, is the Wastewater Treatment Plant (and its various reservoirs). The tricky thing is civilians can only access on a Monday - Friday basis. Protected public lands with water and wetlands are precious few in the area, so this is a real gem. And it doesn't even smell that bad. But no go on the weekends. Argh.

Spending a couple hours circumnavigating the ponds yielded several dawdling year/county (henceforth: YeCo) birds. All of these will come around again next winter, but listers and non-listers alike agree that a day ending with new recordings, of whatever arbitrary context, is still better than one that does not.

If you are in the area on a weekday and want to find a good spot to see Wood Ducks fly away from you, would recommend GWWTP 10 out of 10. Probably the most consistent place to see these and most any other waterfowl. Waterfowl around here are hyper sensitive and hyper-hunted on the open water most anywhere else. The ones that aren't are not around anymore, at any rate.

As one might expect (and, if one doesn't, one should really heighten one's expectations), Red-wing Blackbirds abound. You hear them before you see them, and you see them all around, so you can imagine how much hearing of them is going on. But wouldn't it be weird, creepy even, to be in such a place and not hear them at all??

Green Heron was a skulky year bird, skulky but expected.

They have special camouflage patterns that render cameras unable to focus

This 28 foot anaconda was less expected. They don't normally migrate this far up from the amazon. 

Savannah Sparrows outnumbered the Chipping, and maybe even the Song. That's a sign, surely, there's something special about a place eh?

There were not noteworthy sightings, nothing unusual for the time and place, but I will be returning to GWWTP soon and regularly.

Weekdays at GWWTP, weekends at CONSP. This will be the way. 

Why do these acronyms make we want to have a prune smoothie?? 

Onwards and upwards, one week at a time. Top 5 Baby.

 

Wayne County WTF (...With the Feathers...)

 Something incredible has happened. Something that has not happened for a long, long time...

It wasn't an Ent Moot, and the point is also likely moot, but I have now been out birding, on at least 1 occasion, for at least 1 hour, for 3 weekends in a row! That is borderline serial; that qualifies as a spree!

And in truth, it has been pretty humdrum stuff. A species count of 54 after 9+ hours in the field (albeit is mostly similar habitats) would make young Butler's Birds look awkwardly sideways and try to change the subject. Some of it is rust, some of it is timing, and some of it is a dearth of big ticket area outside of our county's state park (and hereto unvisited water treatment plant).

Why does any of this matter? Why am I talking to myself about it on the internet?? Why am I psyching myself up??? Because I feel it, man. The fingers of desire, and not just cholesterol, wrap around my middle-aged heart. I want to make a county birding run this year.  

I can divide my favorite birding memories into a few categories:

1) Days when I found a nemesis or tough bird and had great looks, like Elegant Trogons or White-tailed Ptarmigan.

2) Days when I got to team up with someone else and help them find great new birds, getting to relive that sweet satisfying succor of discovery vicariously and directly, and getting to give and receive a good crisp High Five.

Since those are not so available for my current time and place, that leaves the other option:

3) Goal-driven days, enjoying the sights and sounds (and smells) of nature, highlighted by the dynamics of birds, while chasing something measurable. This is the best way, especially, to enjoy local birding and county birding when the species and even the sites are familiar. Then every new movement in the brush excites again, every weather front brings new possibilities. Every dark silhouette must be unmasked (unless it calls and you know it's an Eastern Towhee).



Because during the fallow times of year, or when the birds just are not around, one can only stare at non-birds for so long before the lake of color, the dimensional movement, and the nonexistent vocalizations wear you down. 

There was a time, back before Covid and TikTok, when using AI meant you were getting elbow-deep in a cow, not elbow deep into plagiarism, before America was so socially fractured, when Butler's Birds reigned supreme for bird species seen in Wayne County, NC. 

Alas, such is the shame that rests upon the rafters of my house that Butler's Birds has now fallen to a meager 8th place in the All Time Standings, and and even less boastful 15th place for 2026.

This must be corrected. 

I will follow the tracks and the trails.

I will...err...leave behind the dirty laundry of the past?

I will go where the universe guides me...

and guides me...and guides me...and guides me...

And I shall seek the common and the uncommon, the vocal and the silent, the retiring the and the retired.

This is my declaration, come whatever else may (and especially in the month of May), that Butler's Birds is going to build on this momentum, that the warm embers of birding love are now rekindled into blazing flame, and I shall conquer all to see...288 species in Wayne County !?!? 

What h*ly f*cking sh*t there is no freaking way. That's crazy. 

Might needa start counting all those junk escapees from my redneck neighbor's yard. 

At any rate, best bird found so far in 2026 has been this Anhinga, digi-binned by an old quarry run-off along a random strip of highway while lifgted pick-up trucks honked at me.

Whatever it takes. 144 and counting. 

If a Birder Blogs by themselves on the Internet...

 ...Does Anybody Hear Them?

At this point in time at least, ChatGPT and other AI models will be pulling from my data, and thusly be mining an ever-so-smarmily-skewed read on human existence and reflection. And maybe will also learn the wrong banding codes (from me). I will never be totally alone, impacting no one and no thing. About as effectual as this Green treefrog, albeit not even half as cute. 

But my how things change. First, I must acknowledge that is has been more than 7 Years since my last post. This makes me sad, but not ashamed. My binoculars have not collected 7 years of dust by any means, but time has a way of slipping from us, especially when you sign the Faustian contract of parenthood, and your time ceases to be your own. Every once and again I would come back here and reread an old trip report or two, usually after some random, serendipitous reminder. Like the family photo album.

But good birds will always come to those who like good birds. Alas, never when you have the good camera, or in the 6 times you try again after...

Photos courtesy of a cracked iPhone 11 that only zooms to 1.9x without blurring

                

I return now, 7 years later, to a desolate piece of bird blogging landscape. Many of the heroes and legends and champions that I watched and cheered, sought to emulate (or at least borrow some aura from) have moved on and elsewhere. 

In truth though, it was I who left first. I felt, and feel, pain and loss in the nostalgia, but not necessarily in the moment. Best of all, birding, unlike my now-thoroughly-middle-aged dadbod, does not require careful diet and exercise each week to maintain some semblance of presentability. 

It is more like riding a bike. It's best to do it while drunk. 

Sorry, I mean, it's a bad idea to do it on busy streets. 

No wait, I mean the sights and the sounds and the thrills of it live in your bones and your guts. Maybe it's not necessarily like riding a bike, but just that existentially elevating experience of tapping into, or at least catching a peak, of the Universal. And both can be adversely affected by flat tires.

At any rate, I am birding again. I am doing it with some frequency, sometimes with all the gear, sometimes with none. And the delight has not diminished. Old friends and new friends alike, welcoming me back into the wide winged world. Sometimes a new friends turns out to be an old friend. 

LOWA from 6 years ago? Never blogged, Yes. I thought it was lifer NOWA at the time. Maybe it was. Who knows anymore...

Ah, to be birding again, wrestling with classic taxonomic assessments hobbled by bad photos and shaky memory. And if that's not enough of a reunion with the act, how about a weird-ass escapee? 

This was a one-day wonder in my yard (meaning, I wondered about it for 1 day). I did not send it out to the NC listervs.

 

So what are the odds that this 9" non-migratory Diamond Dove flew 10,500 miles from Australia to La Grange, North Carolina? Do we get to log a ship assist!? Probably it just escaped from my neighbor's menagerie down the street. They have emu too, after all. The odds are almost a poor as they are of me stumbling across that accommodating Barred Owl again while I actually have a camera aNd OH WAIT THAT FINALLY HAPPENED!!

Why is this a big deal to me? Because Owls are always cool, and furthermore:

It's probably an error of patronization to anthropomorphize birds. But you can't help but wonder what she is thinking about. Or if she is just trying to enjoy a Saturday morning waiting until next meal time or nap time, like the rest of us.

The Diamond Dove was not the only ABA (non)Record of the backyard deButler these ensuing years. 2023 brought a 3-day wonder that probably escaped from the same house as the Diamond Dove.

This is actually a second ABA record, because believe it or not I also logged the ABA first record of these guys cohabitating a date palm with some lovebirds in Phoenix back in 2018. Weird that when I go to the local Food Lion people aren't clambering for my autograph. They're probably too intimidated.

So to the pressing questions, what will renewed goals be? To submit 1 checklist a week? to See 100 species in Wayne Co. this year? To see 5 new species in North America this year? None of that really matters, but having some sort of metric can help to stay motivated and active. Retirement can be a real degenerate force for folks, so what can my sinecure birding habit be? Maybe these are all just bad questions. Maybe the real question I should be asking is:

If all the kingbird species of North American got into a battle royale, where would Kalshi put the smart money? Eastern Kingbird has the earned reputation of most territorial and aggressive, but Thick-billed have the hardware. Wonder if there's any record of EAKI straying that far west? 

To anyone still out there, anyone who dusts this blog off up in their attic next to grandma's old china, I say thank you for your perseverance, and thank you for the $19.99-a-month subscriptions you have continued to pay without realizing it. I hope to continue with content with some amount of regularity. It seems only fair. 

5MR Month II: February Schmebruary

Several weeks ago I had an interesting exchange with a long-haul grain trucker. I was helping him unload fifty thousand pounds of wheat middlings out of a dump trailer in the rain (sucks), and inevitably we shot the breeze while working. He was a big guy, surly looking with only 3 or 4 of organic teeth left in his head after 40 years of dip, but still nice enough. As one does with itinerant strangers, we talked of traffic, local flavor, and, of course, the weather. 

'Chilly and often rainy' pretty much sums up winters here in east NC, not the worst if not the best seasonal dichotomy. It was here that the fellow threw me a curveball, stating matter-of-factly, "Yeah, it's been a weird winter...'course the government is controlling the weather you know."

This fellow was a chem-trailer.

Rain, wind or snow...Chipping Sparrows seem impervious to it all, much like mailmen

We've probably all been in this situation before, when somebody shatters the conventional window of discourse and in an awkward flash you have to recalibrate: Did they say that on purpose? Do they think I will be a sympathetic audience? Did they say it half seriously and are gauging reaction before commiting? How much longer am I stuck here? Is The Thing actually destroyed at the end of the movie, or has it just absorbed and transmogrified into Kurt Russell?

It's hard to unravel the 'how' and 'why' of something like ChemTrails (or The Thing). If the government is controlling the weather, why is it making the weather bad? Grange Man said it was to hurt farmers. Why? He wasn't sure about that part. Is it to increase support for environmental legislation that will increase federal powers? So Monsanto can eventually monopolize weather-proof seed production? Maybe the most practical question should be, "Do you really think that our government could orchestrate and execute something of this scale, in plain sight, without verified whistleblowers, when it spends 1 or 2 months each year straight-up shut down from budget gridlock?"

Creating artificial clouds or not...it'd be awful hard to keep so many in the dark.

Why bring all of this up now? What has this got to do with bird-blogging?
Because despite all my dismissal, all the evidence and common sense to the contrary...I dunno, maybe the Grain Truck Philosopher was onto something. How else does one explain seven SIX weekends in a row of steady rain and wind??? The Government (Deep State) doesn't want me to win 5MR is why.

Look at this nonsense. So foggy it looks like an impressionist painting.

After a birdy January surpassing expectations, February has been a kick in the binoculars. I guess the universe abhors a vacuum--or maybe that's Big Gov. too. To be fair, I did get one day in February when it was only overcast and not rainy, and the birding was good. Very good.
The birds were eager to be birded, I was happy to oblige. This February wrap up shall be almost exclusively about that day.

Here is pleasant image of pines and vines almost ruined buy a coincidental YB Blurry-headed Vireo.

There have still been some ticks here and there, mostly from incidental driving, but it seems like for the season most of my little 5MR patches have peaked. However, the one where I saw the most potential for spring and summer has continued to grow and now surpassed the others in its own winter right. It helps that I pass through some farmland on the way and have picked up birds like Merlin, Harrier, Am. Pipit that I wouldn't otherwise know where or how to chase; you just happen upon them with time and luck.
The grassy tangles along the Bear Creek are great for sparrows, and the open woods have great promise for breeding passerines, maybe even Bobwhite or Woodcock. I dream of Woodcock. And in the jumbled mess of vines and younger growth between, there's usually something good hiding.



The first Black-and-White Warbler, fresh of its shift at The Footlocker was not just a 5MR bird, but also a county and even --eek-- a State bird. Another score for birding local. This is the only 5MR site where I've been enveloped in a good mixed flock. And in case you have not yet experienced this orgy of ornithological euphoria, being engulfed in the teeming swarm of a feeding mixed flock is one of birding's greatest and most important experiences. The BWWA was joined by both Kinglets, the Chickadee/Titmouse Hivemind complex, Downies & Redbellies, Pine Warblers, Jays, Cards, Towhees, and the Vireo. Eyes on the prize though.

And then there was another. And another. After seeing no Black-and-whites in Carolina before, I had 4 in about 2 hours. I also have not seen any since. I highly recommend watching these birds do their thing; the energetic foraging and beeping with their crisp black and white against all the ecru colors of lower canopy is, how you say, C'est Magnifique!? Plus it's A Warbler in Winter--much better than a lion.

Something I did not really consider until reviewing my 5MR species found vs. missing and expected (a steamy Saturday night, lemme tell ya), is how few woodpeckers are migratory. There is the Sapsucker group (4), then Red-headed and Lewis's. Some ranges expand or contract a bit with the seasons, but none of the picoides and only those two melanerpes migrate. I assume the Sapsuckers move because their diet and habits require warmer temps, whereas the larger genuses are more flexible with their diets. But what about those outliers then? 

Anyway, this all came up because I am waiting on Red-headed Woodpecker to complete my 5MR Woodpeckering. My first few visits to Bear Creek yielded little by way of the timber splitters, but now 3-4 species are reliable, and notably with PIWOs. 

Most conversations that transpire without mentioning and contemplating PIWOs are conversations wasted. Opportunities lost. Things that should be better done.
Part of their allure is the retiring humility juxtaposed with the striking plumage, size, and grace of these birds. Theirs is not a desire for the limelight. My NC experiences with Red-shouldered Hawks are quite the opposite.



Their conspicuous perching and "help I'm being softly murdered!" calls quickly establish presence here the coastal plain around all the woods and swamps, around neighborhoods and parks, in harvested fields and one time at the Dollar General. They are very good-looking, so this behavior is permissible. They're like the Kardashians I guess.

March will be interesting. I still have not solved my waterbird dilemma and am missing the likes of Wigeon and Coot-COOT-for crying out loud. But maybe when other birds start moving up from farther south, my little retention ponds will catch something cool. Until then, mostly just hoping to have a flock of Rusty Blackbirds crash into my window (but be ok).