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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
