Weather

• November 19:   clear, sunny, calm, 50s
• November 20:   clear, sunny, light WSW breeze, 60s
• November 21:   clear, sunny, calm, 60s
• Drivers and helpers: Rob Aldredge, Dan McGillen, Cris Ledon-Rettig, Sumit Dhole

Some highlights and notes ...

• This weekend had the most spectacular weather (sunny, calm, cool) we have ever had in November on the Outer Banks.   Especially important was the light wind that often fell to a dead calm.   The ocean was slightly rippled on Saturday and glassy calm on Sunday, and Lake Mattamuskeet was like a mirror.   As a result, birds were easy to sea on the ocean, and thousands of swans and ducks had spread over most of Lake Mattamuskeet (at least east of the causeway).

• Wintering waterfowl (Anseriformes) make the national wildlife refuges in northeastern NC famous.   We found 23 species altogether -- one species of swan, 2 species of geese, and 20 species of ducks (9 species of up-enders, 11 species of divers).  

• American White Pelicans and American Avocets put on great displays of their specialized coordinated feeding.   We saw the pelicans feeding in shoulder-to-shoulder formation both at Pea Island and at close range at Lake Mattamuskeet.   The avocets fed in a dense moving pack with their bills sweeping the water in front.   Several Snowy Egrets joined the avocets but periodically had to fly over the pack to reach the front again.

• Southward migration over the ocean was in full swing.   Loons (both Red-throatd and Common), Black Scoters, Northern Gannets, Laughing Gulls, and Bottlenose Dolphins passed the Sea Foam Motel in steady streams early in the morning.   The scoters flew in long undulating flocks, sometimes consisting of 200-300 birds.   For awhile just before noon, we watched gannets feeding at sea, by diving like spears from 50 or 80 feet high.

• A surprising number of birds off the usual route for migration had found their way to the Outer Banks this weekend.   These included the Eurasian Wigeon and Lesser Black-backed Gulls from across the Atlantic, the Red-necked Grebe and Red-breasted Nuthatch from farther north, the Horned Lark from farther west, the Cave Swallow from the Caribbean or Mexico, the Yellow Warbler that should have been far to the south, and especially the Pacific or Arctic Loon.

• For a variety of reasons, few students saw these unusual birds.   This trip makes the point that biodiversity often depends on the number of rare (but nevertheless regularly occurring) species.

• The Pacific or Arctic Loon (right in front of the Sea Foam on Saturday afternoon) was especially unexpected.   The Pacific Loon, from the west coast, appears in NC once every year or two, but the Arctic Loon (called Black-throated Diver in the UK), from either Europe or Siberia, has never been seen in NC and perhaps only a few times on the east coast of North America.   The two species are very closely related and replace each other near the Bering Strait -- Arctic Loon nests in the Old World arctic, Pacific Loon in the New World arctic -- the two species are thus almost parapatric (almost, because they apparently overlap in a small area of Alaska and eastern Siberia).   In winter, they are hard to tell apart, but the bird in front of the Sea Foam had one prominent characteristic of the Arctic Loon -- a conspicuous white patch on the flanks.   Regardless of which species it is, this bird is one of the most unexpected birds ever encountered on a Vertebrate Field Zoology trip.

• An ususual feature of this trip was the number of species of rails seen or heard -- four species (Clapper, King, Virginia, Sora) of these common birds that are almost never seen because they hide so efficiently in the dense vegetation of marshes.   They are the model for the saying "thin as a rail" -- they can indeed flatten their bodies from side to side to allow them to slip between the grass stems!

• At Lake Mattamuskeet, the Tundra Swans had spread over the lake -- we saw perhaps 18,000 (16,000-20,000) of them (probably half of the population wintering in eastern North America!).   There were remarkably few immatures among them, but those few were clearly with their parents, except for two that appeared to be orphaned.   The demography of the Tundra Swans will be a topic for discussion at our last meeting!

In the lists below . . .

• F = borrow ponds along US 64 from Tarrboro to Columbia (Friday)
• A = Alligator River NWR
• N = Nags Head (near the Sea Foam Motel on the beach or over the ocean)
• B = Bodie Island Pond
• O = Oregon Inlet (jetty and nearby beach and dunes)
• M = Mattamuskeet NWR

Please send additions/corrections to Haven Wiley

Birds

	Snow Goose	4 -- a family of "snow" morphs (P)
	Canada Goose	800 in scattered groups (F, P, B, M)
	Tundra Swan	300 (P), 18000 spread over the lake (M) -- with very few young
	Wood Duck	5 in canals in pocosin (A)
	Green-winged Teal	400 (P, B, M)
	American Black Duck	300 -- many in pairs (P, B, M)
	Mallard	35 (P, B, M)
	Northern Pintail	200 (N, P, B), 500 (M)
	Northern Shoveler	40 -- most males still partially in drab plumage (P, B, M)
	Gadwall	500 in small groups scattered among flocks of other species (P, B, M)
	Eurasian Wigeon	1 male (B)
	American Wigeon	50 (P), 400 (B), 2000 (M)
	Canvasback	40 far out on Lake Mattamuskeet (M)
	Redhead	1 (A), 1 male in drab plumage (M)
	Ring-necked Duck	90 on ponds (F), 2 (M) -- two females (F, M) had aberrant white patches on the face!
	Greater Scaup	20 migrating southward (N)
	Lesser Scaup	20 migrating southward (P) plus 10 unidentified scaup far out on Lake Mattamuskeet
	Black Scoter	800 migrating southward in undulating lines over the ocean in flocks of up to 300 (N, P)
	Surf Scoter	2 females with Black Scoters (N)
	Bufflehead	120 including a few males (N, P, M)
	Hooded Merganser	37 (F, P, B, M)
	Red-breasted Merganser	30 (N, P)
	Ruddy Duck	20 (P, M)
	Northern Bobwhite	1 rally call heard from large fields (M) -- later a European Starling imitated the rally call
	Red-throated Loon	70 migrating southward, including flocks of 14 and 22 (N)
	Pacific or Arctic Loon	1 on the ocean close to shore Saturday afternoon (see notes above) (N)
	Common Loon	20 migrating southward (N)
	Pied-billed Grebe	60 (F, P, B, M)
	Red-necked Grebe	1 close to shore Saturday afternoon, a northern species rare in winter in NC (N)
	Northern Gannet	500 migrating southward over the ocean and diving from a height at sea (N, P)
	American White Pelican	42 including clear demonstrations of coordinated feeding (P, M)
	Brown Pelican	150 or so along the beach and in the ponds (N, P)
	Double-crested Cormorant	3000 scattered everywhere, roosting in flocks on ponds, drying wings in the sunshine, over 1000 entering Oregon Inlet at evening (N, P, B, O, M)
	Great Blue Heron	30 (F, B, P, M)
	Great Egret	75 including one watched fishing beside the road (N, P, B, M)
	Snowy Egret	30 including several feeding with avocets (P, M)
	Tricolored Heron	8 (P, B, M)
	Black-crowned Night-Heron	2 immatures (O, M)
	White Ibis	35 (P, M)
	Black Vulture	1 (F), 2 (M)
	Turkey Vulture	50 or more scattered on the mainland
	Osprey	3 including one ripping apart a fish it had caught
	Bald Eagle	11 including 2 immatures that flushed all the ducks on Bodie Island pond (F, P, B, M)
	Northern Harrier	8 females (one adult) (P, B), 2 males (adult), 1 immature female (M)
	Sharp-shinned Hawk	2 (F)
	Red-shouldered Hawk	1 (F)
	Red-tailed Hawk	14 (F), 3 (M)
	American Kestrel	12 (F, M)
	Merlin	1 male perched in plain view in pocosin (A)
	Clapper Rail	1 seen clearly in Spartina (O)
	King Rail	1 called (regular train) in cattails (B)
	Virginia Rail	1 called (regular train higher than King Rail's) (B), 1 called (descending oinks) (M)
	Sora	1 glimpsed in cattails and then flying over the boardwalk with keek calls (B)
	American Coot	3000 in dense flocks (P, M)
	Black-bellied Plover	4 (N, O, P)
	Semipalmated Plover	1 (O)
	Killdeer	60 (F, B, M)
	American Avocet	150 including a group of 90 feeding in a dense moving pack (P)
	Willet	8 on the beach (N, P)
	Marbled Godwit	13 in the distance on Salt Flats (P)
	Sanderling	150 on beaches (N, P)
	Dunlin	2 on the beach (P)
	Laughing Gull	50 (N, M)
	Bonaparte's Gull	2 (N)
	Ring-billed Gull	500 on beaches, ponds, plowed agricultural fields (F, N, B, P, O, M)
	Herring Gull	200 including many in a roost of 400 gulls at Oregon Inlet (N, P, O)
	Great Black-backed Gull	200 including many in a roost of 400 gulls at Oregon Inlet (N, P, O, M)
	Lesser Black-backed Gull	4 including both adults and immatures all off course from Europe (N, O)
	Royal Tern	2 lingering before migrating southward (N)
	Forster's Tern	4 (N), 4 (M)
	Rock Pigeon	feral pigeons around highway bridges and piers -- a domesticated species from Europe
	Mourning Dove	20 scattered on the coast and inland
	Belted Kingfisher	12 including one with a 4-inch fish (F, P, B, M)
	Red-bellied Woodpecker	4 (M)
	Downy Woodpecker	1 (M)
	Northern Flicker	8 scattered (F, P, M)
	Pileated Woodpecker	1 called once (M)
	Eastern Phoebe	3 (M)
	Blue Jay	2 (M)
	American Crow	20 (F)
	Fish Crow	20 (M)
	Horned Lark	2 -- a western species scarce in NC (O)
	Tree Swallow	25 (P, M)
	Cave Swallow	1 -- a straggler from either the Caribbean or southern Texas (P)
	Carolina Chickadee	2 (M)
	Red-breasted Nuthatch	1 in Slash Pines with warblers, a northern species irregular in winter in NC (B)
	Carolina Wren	2 (N, B, M)
	House Wren	1 (P)
	Sedge Wren	1 calling in saltmarsh (P)
	Marsh Wren	3 including two that allowed clear looks (B, M)
	Ruby-crowned Kinglet	2 (M)
	Eastern Bluebird	30 (F, M)
	American Robin	30 (F, A, M)
	Brown Thrasher	2 (M)
	Northern Mockingbird	25 (F, N, B, M)
	European Starling	600 or more in flocks everywhere -- an invasive species introduced from Europe
	Yellow Warbler	1 female, observed by Rob and Sumit, which should have migrated south by now (M)
	Yellow-rumped Warbler	150 here for the winter often in small loose flocks everywhere there were trees or bushes
	Palm Warbler	2 (M)
	Common Yellowthroat	4 (P, M)
	Northern Cardinal	2 (M)
	Eastern Towhee	2 (N, B)
	Savannah Sparrow	1 on a power line by large fields (M)
	Fox Sparrow	1 found by Dan on the causeway (M)
	Song Sparrow	20 (F, P, M)
	Swamp Sparrow	12 in marshes and beside canals (P, M)
	Song Sparrow	5 including a few songs (P, M)
	Red-winged Blackbird	2000 including two large flocks (F, P, M)
	Eastern Meadowlark	40 in grassy places (F, P, M)
	Rusty Blackbird	20 with other blackbirds (M)
	Boat-tailed Grackle	200 including both males and females (N, P, M)
	Common Grackle	2000 mostly in large flocks (F, M)
	Brown-headed Cowbird	10 (M)
	House Sparrow	10 -- an invasive species introduced from California (N, P)
	American Goldfinch	1 flying overhead (M)
	House Sparrow	4 -- an invasive species Introduced from Europe (F, N)
	TOTAL SPECIES	116

Reptilia

Mammals