[va-bird] C.B.B.T. & NE North Carolina part 1

January 18-21, 2003.  Virginia & North Carolina.  Harry & Liz Armistead. 
Part 1.  Primarily a visit to northeastern North Carolina, where I could
happily spend an entire winter (or year) poking around. 

Jan. 18, Sat.  Clear, cold, 28 - 35 degrees F.  Wind NW 15-10-0 m.p.h. 
Kettle of 35 Turkey Vultures over Fisherman's Island.  Lots of blackbirds
on the move at Kiptopeke.  5 in. of snow on the ground vs. just a covering
in Philadelphia.  7 degrees in Salisbury, MD, this morning. 

Chesapeake Bay Bridge & Tunnel (C.B.B.T.), Virginia, in the morning.  Lots
of birders incl. 2 field trips and saw Larry lynch, Fenton Day, Kurt
Gaskill, Chris Foster et al.  Of most interest: a Harbor Seal seen
repeatedly at Island 3 plus 2 Brown Pelicans there and, very unusual for
the C.B.B.T., an imm. Bald Eagle swooping around over the open Bay trying
to snag fish.  2 imm. male and 1 female Harlequin Duck at Island 2 plus 185
Lesser Scaup and 2 Brant.  At Island 4 3 female and 1 imm. male Common
Eider, 2 pipits, several cowbirds, and 3 White-winged, 25 Black & 80 Surf
Scoters (good looks at all 3 with many Blacks calling). 60 Long-tailed
Ducks at Island 1.  Also from the C.B.B.T. a Red-winged Blackbird, 25
Purple Sandpipers, a Killdeer, and only 20 gannets, 5 Buffleheads, 20
Red-breasted Mergansers, 7 Common & 3 Red-throated Loons.  We saw 5 Herring
and a juvenile Great Black-backed Gull attacking an ad. Ring-billed Gull. 
Eventually the ring-bill launched feebly off the water and came to roost on
the rocks.   

Afternoon: the long drive down to Manteo on Roanoke Island, NC, where we
stayed at the Duke of Dare Motel for the next 3 nights.  Clara's Restaurant
was closed, to our disappointment, but we had several dinners at the Oasis
on the n. side of the causeway from Nags Head, which has good food, esp.
the she crab soup.

For this area one cannot do better than "a Birder's guide to coastal North
Carolina" by John O. Fussell, III (University of North Carolina Press,
1994, 540pp., hardbound).  This is a superb work, in my opinion the best
regional birding guide I have ever seen.

Bodie Island Lighthouse Pond, 5:15-5:45 P.M., a perfect sunset and dead
calm with an occasional light zephyr from the NW.  Full moon rising over
the dunes.  35-29 degrees F.  Pond with lightest skim of ice but only on
the edges.  6 Virginia Rails, 2 Great Horned Owls (calling from the Italian
Cluster Pine grove), 1 Marsh Wren, 335 Tundra Swans, 2 Black-crowned Night
Herons plus various other herons & egrets, shorebirds, and dabbling ducks
and a Marsh Rabbit.

Sun., Jan. 19.  Clear, 26 - 39 degrees F., wind NW 5-25. 

Bodie I. Lighthouse Pond, 10-11 A.M.  Almost completely frozen since
yesterday at sunset.  White Ibis 40 (all adults), 40 Long-billed
Dowitchers, 1 Glossy Ibis, 200 Bonaparte's Gulls (groups of them flying in
off the sea to roost in ponds all day long), 2 Turkey Vultures, 1
sharpie,15 Tree Swallows and 1 brown Merlin that put on a show hunting over
the pond. 

Pea Island N.W.R., 11 A.M. - 2 P.M.  Low numbers of waterfowl here and at
Bodie I., fewer than we saw on the Christmas count.  1 ad. Peregrine Falcon
(on the Osprey platform in front of the Visitors Center, as it often is),
10 Pied-billed Grebes, 4 Least Sandpipers, 9 Willets (on the beach with
Sanderlings), 525 bonies, 475 Forster's Terns, 275 (only) Snow Geese, 45
Hooded Mergansers, 400  gannets, 1 Semipalmated Plover & 225 boat-tails. 
Liz spotted a River Otter in North Pond.  An ad. Ring-billed Gull
repeatedly harassed a small flock of hoodies.  

A late lunch at Slammin' Sammy's in Nags Head, a sports bar.  From my seat
I could watch, at varying distances, 15 televisions.  The outre photographs
in the men's room (which also has a TV) were worth the trip in and of
themselves, but once was enough.  We, wisely it turned out, decided not to
watch the Eagles game but instead wandered up the coast on Rt. 12 to
Southern Shores, Duck, Sanderling, and Corolla.  A hummingbird, which we
could not identify, shot over the car when we started up Rt. 12 in Southern
Shores.  About a mile farther north there was a roadkill Gray Fox on the
shoulder.  Thousands of large, new houses line Rt. 12 up to its northern
terminus in Corolla.  Yet there is quite a bit of attractive maritime
forest along the way with lovely wind-sculpted Yaupon and Live Oaks.  This
is all very private; parking areas are a rarity.  I could not find a place
to park at the end of Rt. 12, frustrating because there was what looked
like a dead Loggerhead Turtle on the beach and there seemed to be a steady
flight of gannets, loons, scoters, mergansers, and pelicans going down the
coast.      

At Corolla we walked around the grounds of the old Whalehead Club.  Built
for $383,000 in 1925, with numbered and signed Tiffany lighting fixtures,
cork floors, corduroy walls, 20 bedrooms, and a copper roof, this has to be
the ultimate hunting retreat.  The basement is 6,000 square feet.  Oh ...
and the owner also owned a 4.5 mile stretch of the beach, from the sea to
the sound.  The Whalehead Club is featured on the cover of "Gun clubs &
decoys of Back Bay & Currituck Sound" by Archie Johnson & Bud Coppedge
(Pictorial Heritage Publishing Co., 1991, 223pp., hardbound).  This fine
book captures the lure and lore of hunting in the old days when clouds of
waterfowl frequented the NC sounds.  

As a boy I used to fantasize, along with a couple of friends, about the
ultimate duck blind.  It would have electricity, heat, and bunks as well as
innumerable decoys, crates of shotgun shells, and mahogany gun racks filled
with Parkers, Holland & Hollands, and Browning auto-loaders.  Our luck as
hunters, never good, declined further along with waterfowl numbers and we
lost interest in gunning.  But the Whalehead Club would have suited us
fine.   

Low water around the Whalehead Club on Currituck Sound attracted a nice
group of winter shorebirds:  5 Greater Yellowlegs, 9 Dunlin, 3 Least
Sandpipers, 2 Sanderlings, 3 Wilson's Snipe, and 4 Killdeer.

Adjacent to the club, which is being renovated as a tourist attraction (the
substantial boathouse is in bad repair), is the lovely, brick Currituck
Beach Lighthouse, 162 feet high, with a beam visible for 18 nautical miles.
 Surrounded by beautiful plantings, charming, bevelled circular brick
walks, and attractive keeper's houses, the light alone is worth a visit.  

Unfortunately, another bridge is being planned to span the Sound to this
north stretch of Route 12.  North of where the paving ends, around Swan
Beach, is the Currituck Banks N.W.R. and a tract owned by The Nature
Conservancy, which we did not have time to visit.  We also regret not
visiting the Conservancy's Nags Head Woods and the 112,000 acre Pocosin
Lakes N.W.R. to the west of Mattamuskeet and Alligator River.  

At sunset, a perfect one, we pulled into Duck and watched flights of Tundra
Swan flocks flying north up the Sound.  Conditions seemed perfect but there
was no greenflash at sunset.       

Dinner at Darrell's in Manteo, a perfectly good restaurant, also with good
she crab soup.  The mounted Blue Marlin in back was caught in 1989 after a
1.5 hr. fight, 25 mi. out from Oregon Inlet and weighed 932 pounds.  I wish
I  could feel there are some more out there that size.

The whole OBX syndrome is now way overdone.  Every other car in
Philadelphia seems to have an OBX sticker on it.  Entire demographic units
of North Carolina now issue OBX-numbered car plates to their residents. 
When I hear of the Outer Banks now I just as often think of the place where
you deposit money as I do a barrier island.  One more reason I sometimes
think I was born in the wrong century.  But there certainly are still a lot
of good things to see.

Best to all.-Henry T. Armistead, 523 E. Durham St., Philadelphia, PA
19119-1225.  215-248-4120.  Any off-list replies, please, to:
harryarmistead@xxxxxxxxxxx
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