Vertebrates at Pea Island NWR and Mattamuskeet NWR
(also Nags Head, Bodie Island Pond, Alligator River NWR,
and en route)
November 9-11, 2007
Weather
- November 10: partly cloudy, cool, calm until about 10:30, then strong N
wind and overcast with intermittent rain
- November 11: overcast with a stong N wind on the beach, mostly sunny with
a light NE breeze inland
- Drivers: Jonathan Micancin, David Luther, Elizabeth Wojtowicz, Minna Wiley
Some highlights and notes ...
- After two months of warm, dry weather, temperatures dropped only in the
past two weeks. Perhaps for this reason, we found an interesting
mixture of birds that should already have migrated southward and some that
had just arrived from the north.
- Among the lingering migrants were the Piping
Plover, Semipalmated Plover, Hudsonian Godwits, White-rumped Sandpiper, Stilt
Sandpiper, Laughing Gull, Caspian Tern, Royal Tern, Common Tern, Black
Skimmer, Blue-gray Gantcatcher, Blue-headed Vireo, and American Redstart.
The migrations of the Hudsonian Godwits, White-rumped
and Stilt Sandpipers would soon take them to Argentina. The
Hudsonian Godwits would probably even make the journey nonstop!
- Some species were clearly in the process of
migrating as we watched them -- Northern Gannetsm, Black Scoters, Surf
Scoters, Laughing Gulls, loons, all flying southward over the ocean in large
numbers.
- We found a record number of Bald Eagles -- 32
(eclipsing last year's record number of 28). Three immature eagles had
an aerial dog-fight over a piece of rotten fish. We watched a Bald
Eagle "plowing" a path through the rafts of freaked-out American Coots.
- An immature male Peregrine on a power pole on Pea
Island posed long enough for us all to study it well. Also in plain
view, another Peregrine carried some small unidentified prey across Lake
Mattamuskeet. Even though it was not hunting, it scared the Hudsonian
Godwits up into the air as it passed them.
- Among the species that were out of place in NC were the Eurasian Wigeons. One male allowed spectacular views
of its chestnut and golden head in the sunshine on Saturday morning.
- The Mute Swan is a newcomer to NC, slowly but
surely invading coastal North Carolina from the Chesapeake Bay (they were
brought from Europe to New York less than a century ago). The five we
saw might become the first breeding birds in NC, if they stick around next
summer.
- The swans illustrate closely related species with contrasting patterns of migration (Tundra Swan migrates
thousands of miles from the Arctic to NC, Mute Swan moves a hundred miles at
most). Then there are the two godwits (Marbled Godwit migrates from
the Great Plains to the nearest coast, Hudsonian Godwit flies nonstop from the
Arctic to Argentina). And the gulls and terns (Laughing Gull and
Royal Tern nest on the NC coast and migrate to the Caribbean
for the winter, Ring-billed and Bonaparte's Gulls nest in Canada and migrate
to the southeastern coast for the winter -- they take shifts in NC!).
- We found 19 different species of sandpipers and
relatives (plovers, oystercatcher, avocet, willet, godwits, yellowlegs,
sandpipers, dunlin, snipe) How do all of these sandpipers differ in
ecology enough to coexist?
- Likewise for the 19 different species of ducks.
How do they all differ in ecology enough to coexist? The same
question arises about the gulls and terns we saw (although we did not have
such good opportunities to study them).
- The warm weather recently also contributed to the large numbers of other
vertebrates we encountered -- lots of Yellow-bellied Sliders, White-tailed
Deer, Bottlenose Dolphins leaping from the water, and
one Black Bear up a tree.
In the lists below . . .
- F = borrow ponds along US 64 from Tarrboro to Roper (Friday)
- A = Alligator River NWR
- N = Nags Head (near the Sea Foam Motel on the beach)
- P = Pea Island NWR
- B = Bodie Island Pond
- O = Oregon Inlet (jetty and nearby beach and dunes)
- M = Mattamuskeet NWR
Please send additions/corrections to
Haven Wiley
Reptilia
| | |
|---|
| Yellow-bellied Slider Trachemys
scripta | many (P, M) |
| Common Snapping Turtle Chelydra
serpentina | at least 2 (P) |
| | |
Birds
| | |
| Common Loon | 1 (N) |
| Red-throated Loon | 1 (N) |
| Pied-billed Grebe | 25 (F, P, M) |
| Northern Gannet | 300 or more moving
southward over the ocean -- also circling flocks diving for fish (N,
P) |
| Brown Pelican | many along the beach (P,
N) |
| Double-crested Cormorant | 10000 flying to
sandbars in the inlet -- many scattered elsewhere
(N, P, M) |
| Great Blue Heron | 80 including 30 in one
field near the catfish ponds near Roper (F, A, P, M) |
| Great Egret | 30 around edges of ponds
(P, M) |
| Snowy Egret | 10 (P) |
| Little Blue Heron | 1 immature
(P) |
| Tricolored Heron | 5
(P) |
| White Ibis | 50 (P) |
| Tundra Swan | 50 (P), 4000
(M), with few young, despite a few families with 3 or 4 young |
| Mute Swan | 5, an
invading species (P) |
| Snow Goose | 150 white morphs (P), 100
of all morphs, in the air just as we arrived (M) |
| Canada Goose | 350 in scattered groups (F,
P, M) |
| Wood Duck | 4 in ditches (F) |
| Green-winged Teal | 100 (P, B, M) |
| American Black Duck | 300 -- many in
pairs |
| Mallard | 4 (P) |
| Northern Pintail | 2000 (P, B),
100 (M) |
| Northern Shoveler | 8 (P) |
| Gadwall | 70 in small groups scattered among
flocks of wigeon |
| Eurasian Wigeon
| 3 males (P, B) |
| American Wigeon | 500 (P), 4000
(M) |
| Redhead | 4 (P) |
| Ring-necked Duck | 10 (P), 100 (M) |
| Greater Scaup | 60 flying south
over the ocean (N) and 20 or so far out in the lake |
| Lesser Scaup | 10 (P), 10 (M),
with Ring-necked Ducks |
| eider species | 2 big dark
ducks flying northward into the wind just beyond the wild surf (N) |
| Harlequin Duck | one much
smaller, short-billed, dark-winged duck with the two eiders (N) |
| Black Scoter | 300 in flocks of 20-80
flying southward over the ocean (N, P) |
| Surf Scoter | 20 in small groups in flocks
of Blacks (N) |
| Bufflehead | 50 in a tight flock with
several males (P), 10 (M) |
| Ruddy Duck | 200 mostly females (M)
|
| Black Vulture | 2 flushed from the highway
(M) |
| Turkey Vulture | 60 or more scattered on the
mainland |
| Osprey | 1 (P) |
| Bald Eagle | 32 -- a new
record including 20 near the catfish ponds south of Roper (F) and 12
(M) |
| Northern Harrier | 10 -- all females except
one immature male(A, P, M) |
| Sharp-shinned Hawk | 4 (B, M) including one
that grabbed a Tree Swallow from a low swirling flock |
| Cooper's Hawk | 2 (M) including one that
perched in plain view |
| Red-shouldered Hawk | 1 (F) |
| Red-tailed Hawk | 14 (F, M) |
| American Kestrel | 6 (F, M) |
| Merlin | 1 female swooped past when almost
nobody was looking! (M) |
| Peregrine | 3 including an immature male
in plain view on a power pole (P), one that harried the
pigeons around the pier (N), and an immature female that carried a small kill
low across the lake to the island (M) |
| American Coot | in dense flocks -- in total
1000 (P), 20000 (M) |
| Black-bellied Plover | 6 (P, N) |
| Semipalmated Plover | 4 (P), 5 (M) |
| Piping Plover | 1
with a Semipalmated Plover (O) |
| Killdeer | 6 (F, M) |
| American Oystercatcher | 1 (O) |
| American Avocet | 150 feeding in South Pond (P) |
| Greater Yellowlegs | 25 (P, M) |
| Lesser Yellowlegs | 1 (P) |
| Willet | 25 on the beach (N, P) |
| Hudsonian Godwit | 3
feeding in preparation for a long migration to Argentina (M) |
| Marbled Godwit | 20 (P) where they will
spend the winter |
| Sanderling | 50 on beaches (N, P) |
| Least Sandpiper | 3 on a muddy shoreline
(M) |
| White-rumped Sandpiper | 1 feeding with
Leasts but like Hudsonian Godwits about to migrate to Argentina (M) |
| Purple Sandpiper | 2 on the jetty
(O) |
| Dunlin | 30 on muddy shorelines where they
will probably spend the winter (P) |
| Stilt Sandpiper | 1 feeding in a muddy pool
and also about to fly to Argentina (P) |
| Long-billed Dowitcher | 3 (M) probably this
species which spends the winter along the southeastern coast |
| Wilson's Snipe | 5 feeding in plain view
(M) |
| jaeger species | 1,
probably a Parasitic Jaeger, flying southward over the ocean (N) |
| Laughing Gull | many (N, P) migrating
southward and scattered elsewhere |
| Ring-billed Gull | 60 scattered (N, P, M) --
most have yet to arrive for the winter |
| Herring Gull | 30 scattered (N, P) |
| Great Black-backed Gull | numerous
everywhere (N, P, M) |
| Caspian Tern | 2 (M), an adult with a noisy
youngster, lingering before migrating |
| Royal Tern | 20 (N, P, M) alos
lingering |
| Common Tern | 1 (P) |
| Forster's Tern | 250 (N, P, M) |
| Black Skimmer | 8 flying
northward in calm weather (N) |
| Rock Dove | feral pigeons around highway
bridges and piers |
| Mourning Dove | scattered on the coast and
inland |
| Great Horned Owl | 2 watched
hooting at dusk (A)
| | Belted Kingfisher | 10 scattered (F, P, M)
|
| Red-bellied Woodpecker | 4 (M) |
| Downy Woodpecker | 1 heard (M) |
| Hairy Woodpecker | 1 heard (M) |
| Northern Flicker | 2 |
| Pileated Woodpecker | 1 en route
(F) |
| Eastern Phoebe | 2 (M) |
| Tree Swallow | 200 (P), 4000 (b), 2000 (M),
inlcuding one caught by a Sharp-shinned Hawk |
| American Crow | scattered inland |
| Fish Crow | 8 (N, M) |
| Carolina Chickadee | 2 (M) |
| Carolina Wren | 2 (N, M) |
| House Wren | 1 (M) |
| Sedge Wren | about 4 called in short marsh
(P) |
| Golden-crowned Kinglet | 2 (M) |
| Ruby-crowned Kinglet | 2 (M) |
| Blue-gray Gnatcatcher | 4 (M) |
| Eastern Bluebird | 20 (F, M) |
| American Robin | 2 (M) |
| Gray Catbird | 1 (M) |
| Northern Mockingbird | 6 (N, M) |
| Cedar Waxing | 1 or more calling in tops of
pines |
| European Starling | flocks everywhere!
|
| Blue-headed Vireo | 2 (M) |
| Orange-crowned Warbler | 1 (M) |
| Yellow-rumped Warbler | 60 (P, M) |
| Pine Warbler | 2 (M) |
| Palm Warbler | 20 (P, M) |
| American Redstart | 1 (M) |
| Northern Cardinal | 4 (N, M) |
| Eastern Towhee | 1 (P) |
| Ipswich Sparrow | 1
(O) |
| Savannah Sparrow | 1 (O) |
| Song Sparrow | 3 (F, M) |
| Swamp Sparrow | 100 in marshes and beside
canals (P, M) |
| White-throated Sparrow | 2 (M) |
| Red-winged Blackbird | 180, scattered flocks
(P, M) |
| Eastern Meadowlark | 4 (P.M) |
| Boat-tailed Grackle | 100 (N, P), very noisy
at dawn |
| Common Grackle | 300 in flocks |
| Brown-headed Cowbird | 50 (F) |
| House Finch | 9 (N) |
| House Sparrow | 10 in Tarrboro (F) |
| | |
| TOTAL SPECIES | 123 |
| | |
Mammals
| | |
| Gray Squirrel | 2 (M) |
| Marsh Rabbit | 1 on roadside
beside a large freshwater marsh (P) |
| Black Bear | 1 half-grown animal had shinnied up a skinny tree beside the road
-- but quickly shinnied down before everybody got a look! (M) |
| White-tailed Deer | 15
(F, M) |
| Bottlenose Dolphin | 20 or more
moving slowly northward with much jumping (N) |
|