Guest column

Who among us are not looking for an off the beaten path location to end what, by all accounts, has been a tumultuous year?

To refine: Who wants to brave the end-of-year weather on the Outer Banks counting the many birds present and making a modest contribution to our knowledge of trends in bird life with implications for all of us?

I’m referring, of course, to the Christmas Bird Counts, the largest and longest-running community science projects in the world. Sponsored by the National Audubon Society. The first counts, 27 of them, began in 1900 and were organized by ornithologist, Frank Chapman, founder and publisher of “Bird-Lore,” which later became Audubon Magazine.

I am the founder and compiler of the Ocracoke and Portsmouth Island Christmas Bird Counts.

Billed as an alternative to a traditional holiday activity known as the “side hunt,” this hunt was a competition to see who could shoot as many birds and animals as possible. Instead, the Christmas Bird Counts focused on just counting birds, recording both species and the number of individuals — a means to promote conservation and improve knowledge of bird populations. It succeeded.

This activity has grown exponentially. Last year there were about 80,000 volunteers and 2,500 counts across 20 countries in the Western Hemisphere. The counts take place during a three-week period from Dec. 14 to Jan. 5 each year.

Two of these counts are held on Ocracoke and Portsmouth islands, the last two days of the year. The Ocracoke count is scheduled for Dec. 30 and Portsmouth, Dec. 31. There have been a few occasions when the dates were reversed due to weather concerns about getting to Portsmouth. They are RSVP only and many of the volunteer birders participate in both. RSVPs are needed because we need to know how many will be heading to Portsmouth Island, which is only accessible by boat and part of Cape Lookout National Seashore.

A count period covers 24 hours, but Portsmouth is much shorter as the participants board a skiff run by Capt. Donald Austin from Ocracoke Village in the early morning and return by midafternoon. Capt. Austin has a new skiff that accommodates up to 22 passengers. There is a $25 fee.

A  typical Ocracoke count can tally 80-85 species and Portsmouth, 65.

Portsmouth is a particularly enticing count. Stark, with wonderful winter light and mosquito-free, one can wander the village with binoculars in one hand and a camera in the other. Portsmouth is noted for having one of the state’s highest wintering populations for American oystercatchers. A few years ago, the counters were thankful for a bald eagle. Not only as a good bird for the count, but flying low, it spooked 29 hidden oystercatchers that flew into the air.

On Ocracoke you can walk the winter beach, scan the marshes and walk through maritime forests. Double-crested cormorants will be in the thousands and yellow-rumped warblers in the hundreds. Northern gannets, red knots and red-breasted nuthatches are usually reported.

One of the tricks to withstand winter weather, sometimes high winds and low temperatures, is to dress appropriately with more layers the better.

If spending the days counting birds is not enough, there is a social tally rally famed for its vegetarian chili and key lime pie at the compiler’s house near the Ocracoke lighthouse that takes place in early evening of the final day of the year.

The Carolina Bird Club has details about the North Carolina and South Carolina Christmas counts.

If you are interested in participating in either of these two counts, contact the compiler, me, Peter Vankevich, via Facebook or petevankevich@gmail.com.

Reprinted from the Ocracoke Observer

One can feel helpless at times as to what one can do in the face of large-scale environmental catastrophes such as the unfathomable amount of plastic in the ocean. But individuals can take some actions that can make a positive difference and keeping the night as dark as possible is one of them.

Kaye and Rick Kohler are longtime vacation visitors to Ocracoke, during their visit in June they discussed their efforts in a talk in the Ocracoke Community Library: “Dark Skies: How to Preserve and Protect One of the Island’s Natural Wonders.” Rick also was a guest on WOVV’s “What’s Happening on Ocracoke.” 

The Kohlers live in Rappahannock County by the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

As longtime members of the Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection, they have been concerned with the harmful effects of artificial lighting on the health of people and wildlife.

In 2019, the League, working with others, was successful in getting the Rappahannock community park certified as a Silver-Tier Dark Skies Park by the DarkSky International (IDA).

The IDA’s mission is to raise awareness about the negative effects of artificial light at night on human health, wildlife, and to provide the public with information and resources to help restore the night.

They have their work cut out as every year light pollution is increasing by about 10 percent around the USA, Rick said in his talk.

Rick and Kaye’s talk focused on what the IDA says, there is overwhelming evidence that light pollution can have harmful impacts on both people and wildlife and they provided examples.

Like many animals, humans have biological clocks called circadian rhythms regulated by the natural light-dark cycle.

Artificial lighting can disrupt these rhythms, which can cause insomnia, eye strain, headaches and lead to stress, anxiety and depression.

Artificial light can harm animals and even plants.

Nocturnal frogs and toads rely on darkness to make their mating calls. Excessive lighting can adversely impact their reproduction rates.

During nocturnal migration, birds become disoriented by bright lights causing millions of deaths every year by fatal collisions with tall lit buildings, some with reflective glass walls.

Last October, more than 1,000 birds were killed striking just one lit building in Chicago which lies along a major migratory route.

Fireflies are facing a worldwide decreasing population. Their flash of light is their mating signal and without darkness, they cannot find mates.

Some plants rely on specific lengths of daylight to trigger flowering and artificial lighting can cause them to grow more rapidly, flower out of season or not at all. Light pollution can disrupt the behavior of nocturnal pollinators like moths. One study showed that moths flew toward the street lamps and away from flowering plants. This resulted in a reduction of plant pollination. 

Artificial lighting can cause sea turtle hatchlings to become disoriented and wander inland, where they often die of dehydration or predation by ghost crabs, raccoons, opossums and coyotes, according to the Sea Turtle Conservancy.

Its website notes scientists believe the hatchlings have an innate instinct that leads them to the brightest horizon, which, historically meant over the ocean.

The Cape Hatteras National Seashore provides information on how artificial light is harmful to hatchlings and what steps can be taken to reduce lighting.

Coastal communities around the world have passed ordinances that require residents to turn off beachfront lights during turtle nesting season, but not everyone complies.

In the upper Outer Banks, when sea turtles are getting ready to hatch, physical barriers, like screens or shades, are put up to block light from reaching the beach.

Ocracoke village is surrounded by dark skies, which makes stargazing and astronomy an attraction.

But Ocracoke village has grown brighter in the last several years, creating what is known as a sky glow that reduces the ability to see the stars at night.

The Kohlers say a lot of this diffused light can be remedied by using down-shielded light fixtures that direct the light downward where it is needed and does not allow the light to go upward.

Other steps include using warm-colored LED bulbs with a color temperature of 3000K or lower. These bulbs emit less blue light, which is more likely to scatter in the atmosphere.

Smart lighting systems, motion sensors and timers ensure that lights are only on when necessary, thereby reducing overall light output.

In 2021, Cape Lookout National Seashore became an International Dark Sky Park designated by the IDA. It joined 121 other national parks and is the first to receive this certification on the Atlantic Coast. This was achieved by community support from the Crystal Coast Stargazers Club, the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center and the Carteret County Chamber of Commerce.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore has completed some steps in the process, but an official application has not been submitted, according to Mike Barber, the public affairs specialist.

Unlike the challenge of combatting human-caused climate change, reducing light pollution is as easy as simply leaving lights off at night whenever possible and by directing outside lighting downward.

So, comparatively, drastically reducing one of our many forms of pollution is as easy as, well, the flick of a light switch.

Also from the Ocracoke Observer: Let’s get Cape Hatteras National Seashore designated as an International Dark Sky Park

This story is provided courtesy of the Ocracoke Observer, a newspaper covering Ocracoke island. Coastal Review Online partners with the Ocracoke Observer to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast.

Reprinted from Ocracoke Observer

Those spending time on Ocracoke beach and other areas of the Outer Banks this spring may have been pleasantly surprised to see flocks of binge-foraging red knots, the rufa subspecies (Calidris canutus rufa).

Transitioning from the drab basic or winter gray/white plumage to their bright orange/red breasts and rufous backs could make identification a challenge. But their behavior of feeding along the waterline in flocks from 10 or so to more than 100 distinguishes them from other shorebirds here.

The knots were using the beach as a foraging stopover, fattening up to make their long migration to their nesting grounds in the central Canadian Arctic.

Listed in 2014 as threatened under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, their presence in large numbers here and other areas added to a cautious sign of optimism that the species is doing better.

Historically, the Delaware Bay region has been considered the most important stopover for red knots’ long migration because that area coincides when horseshoe crabs arrive to spawn and lay millions of eggs. Horseshoe crab eggs are a high-fat, nutrient-rich food source and essential to fueling the Red Knots’ migration to their Arctic breeding grounds.

An independent Delaware Bay survey in May reported 22,000 red knots, the highest number in four years. The lowest number tallied in these surveys was in 2021 with just 6,880. By contrast, the highest count was in 1989 with 90,000 individuals.

Another encouraging sign was aerial surveys taken in key Tierra del Fuego areas reported the highest number of wintering knots in 10 years. The southern tip of South America has been an important wintering ground. Those wintering individuals make one of the longest migrations — some 9,000 miles to nest and again return in the fall.

The two national seashores on the Outer Banks monitor red knots along with other species.

According to Amy Thompson, the biological science technician for Ocracoke, Cape Hatteras National Seashore collects red knot data a couple of different ways.

One of these methods is to systematically survey the entire island on the fifth, 15th and 25th of every month when weather conditions permit. The May 15 survey counted 1,318 individuals combined from the three districts of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore that include Bodie, Hatteras and Ocracoke islands, she wrote in an email.

“The other method is to collect opportunistic counts of Red Knots while we’re conducting morning patrols,” she added. “This provides a general idea of the total number of Red Knots stopping along the Seashore to rest and refuel on a daily basis. In the month of May, Ocracoke staff counted over 100 Red Knots every day with a minimum of 106 on May 1 and the maximum of 1,951 on May 10.”

The staff of Cape Lookout National Seashore, south of Ocracoke Islan, concluded their last red knot spring migration survey on June 5. Their surveys are divided into South Core Banks (SCB) and North Core Banks (NCB). The combined peak count was on May 15 with 1,986 individuals, according to Jon Altman, supervisory biologist for Cape Lookout National Seashore. “This number is lower than the high count of 2,997 birds last year on May 25, but overall, May 2023 had more birds the whole month than 2022,” he said in an email.

The combined total from nine surveys from March 15 to June 5 for Cape Lookout was 7,402 individuals.

“Unfortunately, we have not been able to cover from Ocracoke Inlet to Evergreen Inlet which is three miles of prime Red Knot habitat with little to no disturbance since it is hard to get to by boat and people can only walk that section.,” he said.

The red knot has a been a source of concern due to a rapid decline of its population, as much as a staggering 87% since 2000, according to a study, and more than 94% since the 1980s in some areas of the Atlantic Coast.

The principal cause for this decline is from a drastic decrease of horseshoe crab eggs which have plummeted due to the overharvesting of horseshoe crabs.

Of the 22,000 red knots observed, only 2,200 were seen on the Delaware side of the bay, the rest were in New Jersey. This is due, in part, to New Jersey having more protections for horseshoe crabs than Delaware, including a 2008 moratorium on harvesting, beach closures and habitat restoration projects.

The Carolina coasts are important foraging/resting stopovers for red knots as well as wintering grounds for them in small numbers.

The information gathered by the National Park Service along with aerial surveys adds to a better understanding of red knot migration and helps in making a recovery plan.

Taking active steps to help red knots increase their numbers will also benefit other species that make long distance migrations such as the ruddy turnstone and the semipalmated sandpiper.

There are many governmental agencies, conservation organizations, researchers and volunteers from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic working to save the red knot. These efforts and limiting excessive harvesting of horseshoe crabs go hand in hand to removing them from the threatened list of the Endangered Species Act.

One website worth reading is A Rube with a View written by Larry Niles, Ph.D. He chronicled surveying the red knots presence in New Jersey this past spring. 

This story is provided courtesy of the Ocracoke Observer, a newspaper covering Ocracoke island. Coastal Review is partnering with the Ocracoke Observer to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast. 

Reprinted from Ocracoke Observer

The Ocracoke Waterfowl Festival will be in its fifth year, but in a way, it’s into second generation.

A founding principle of this event was to celebrate a featured carver and this year it is Scotty Robinson, whose father, Dan Robinson, was featured in the second year of the festival.

The festival, produced by the Ocracoke Island Decoy Carvers Guild, will take place at the Berkley Manor Barn and grounds from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, April 15.

During the festival there will be carvers, a silent auction, raffle, a bake sale beginning at 10 a.m. and Fat Fellas BBQ from Newport will have plates with barbecue, chicken, coleslaw, baked beans, potato salad, hush puppies and tea for $15 a plate.

The Robinsons have a family history of decoy carving and serving in the Coast Guard.

Scotty followed his dad, who had a long and distinguished tenure, by enlisting in the Coast Guard when he was 20 years old, retiring 20 years later.

“I was fortunate to spend my Coast Guard assignments in Virginia and North Carolina,” he said. “My favorite was Cape Charles. Chincoteague Island, which has a long history of decoys, was not far away.”

While stationed on the Delmarva Peninsula, he became enamored with the Virginia style of decoys. “They are hollowed out and very detailed, especially with the painting,” he said.

A graduate of Ocracoke School’s class of 1979, Scotty grew up around decoys. His grandfather, Eldon Willis, a renowned carver, also was an inspiration.

His first stab at helping with a decoy was in the fourth grade.

Eldon had carved a miniature duck and asked Scotty to paint it. It wasn’t until he was 14 or so that he tried carving himself.

“I liked piddling with carving as a boy, but I was more interested in collecting decoys,” Scotty said. “My uncle Roy collected them, and I admired the craft and liked to study them.”

Scotty’s interest in collecting also came from attending decoy festivals in Virginia Beach and Maryland as a youth with his father and John Simpson, last year’s featured carver.

But it got to a point that they were becoming too expensive — an incentive to do more carving himself.

While in the Coast Guard he did some carving, and those decoys were used for hunting. After retiring from the Coast Guard in 2001, he began to do more carving, especially in the last 10 years, he said.

His first decoys were not for the shelf but for the water.

“My first attempt was to carve a rig of hollowed mallards and black ducks,” he said. “I made a few rigs of decoys, but none of them are still around.”

Decoy carvers have a variety of techniques and wood preferences.

Scotty likes to hollow out the wood so that the decoys will be lighter and able to float.

“A lot of my decoys can be used for hunting, but most likely will be seen on a shelf or in a bookcase,” he said.

He does his own painting and prefers oil, which seems to take forever to dry. Acrylic is his alternative.

“For me, carving is a mood thing. You gotta be in the mood to carve,” he said. “Some people just sit down and do it because they’re bored. They gotta have something to do with their hands.”

When he is in that perfect groove, he can carve a decoy in one day.

The American Widgeon, carved and painted by Scotty, is the featured duck for this year’s festival and in the festival’s tradition, it will be raffled.

This story is provided courtesy of the Ocracoke Observer, a newspaper covering Ocracoke island. Coastal Review is partnering with the Ocracoke Observer to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast. 

Reprinted from the Ocracoke Observer.

The eastern towhee, a strikingly handsome bird that — good looks notwithstanding — is perhaps more noted for its many vocalizations.

Towhee is an onomatopoeic description of one of its most common calls, coined in 1731 by the naturalist and bird artist, Mark Catesby.

But well before that, the eastern towhee played a minor role in North Carolina’s early history. John White was the governor in 1587 of the small colony on Roanoke Island that later became known as the Lost Colony and was the grandfather of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America.

White was also a cartographer and an accomplished artist. During his time on Roanoke, he drew many sketches of the flora and fauna, including both sexes of the towhee, which are the first depicted renderings of the species.

When one thinks of a sparrow, many envision drab-colored birds with subtle streaking, spots and eye lines that can make species identification sometimes challenging. Many will be surprised to learn that a towhee is also a member of the sparrow family.

The male has a black head, neck and shoulders, a white chest and rust-red wings and sides.

The female has the same color pattern as the male but is dark brown where the male is black colored. Both have long tails, a noted trait for all six towhee species in North America.

Throughout most of its distribution range, the eye color of these birds is bright red, but if you find yourself birding in Florida or the southeastern coastal regions beginning on the Outer Banks, you may see towhees whose eye color is white or straw colored.

The yellowish straw color eyes may be the result of interbreeding between the white-eye and red-eye individuals. The towhees on Ocracoke have mostly red- and straw-colored eyes. Pure white eye color individuals are rare.

Eastern towhees nest throughout the eastern United States and southeast Canada. Northern populations are migratory. Southern populations, including Ocracoke, are year-round residents.

Although normally hidden in thickets and on the ground throughout Ocracoke Island, in the spring and early summer, they will perch on top of a shrub or small tree and sing loudly.

Females build nests and incubate eggs and both sexes provide parental care and will drive off would-be predators approaching the nest.

It is not only their vocalizations that indicate they are nearby. The eastern towhee uses a distinctive foot-scratching behavior to displace loose leaves on the ground and uncover arthropod prey. This foraging behavior occurs more in winter when much of its food comes from the ground.

Omnivores, their diet varies with the season, and they consume seeds, fruits and a wide variety of invertebrates, beetles, moths, caterpillars, grasshoppers and crickets.

During spring migration you may be pleasantly surprised to see one resting in your backyard from a long night’s journey into day. Unfortunately, that is when they are most vulnerable to predators. The hazards of migration are many. Because they are ground birds, they are susceptible to predators, including pets.

Their biggest threat occurs during migration, which is only nocturnal. After a long night’s journey into day and exhausted, they rest on the ground making them susceptible to predators, especially cats.

Listen: The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a variety of eastern towhees recordings.

When to see: Year-round. More easily seen in spring when they will sing at the top of bushes and small trees 

Where: Throughout the island where there are thickets. Springer’s Point is a good location

If you thumb through a bird field guide published before 1995 that includes eastern North America, you will not find an eastern towhee. You will, however, see a bird with a striking resemblance that is a rufous-sided towhee. It is one and the same.

The official arbiter of bird nomenclature, The American Ornithologists’ Union, determined that this bird and its counterpart in the west, the spotted towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) and formerly lumped together as subspecies, were split and each received full species status.

So why are they famous for their sounds? In addition to the sound of its name, it makes a call described as “cherwink.” But it is the song that I find so impressive, which sounds almost exactly as “Drink your teeeeeee.”

Make mine yaupon.

This story is provided courtesy of the Ocracoke Observer, a newspaper covering Ocracoke island. Coastal Review is partnering with the Ocracoke Observer to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast. 

Reprinted from the Ocracoke Observer.

Hannah Bunn West has shone a spotlight on some little-known, impactful women in the history of the Outer Banks.

Her new book, “Remarkable Women of the Outer Banks” (The History Press, 2022), reveals seven such women, from the arrival of the first Europeans to the recent past.

The first chapter begins with the Lost Colony and features Eleanor Dare, wife of Ananias Dare and the daughter of John White, the colony’s governor.

In her third trimester of pregnancy, Eleanor arrived on Roanoke in July of 1587. On Aug. 18, she gave birth to Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America. Little is known as to what became of them.

Back then, mother/infant mortality even in England was high and that Eleanor gave birth in such a primitive setting with no medical help caught the author’s attention.

West, who grew up in Kill Devil Hills, provides meticulous detail about the time and the theories of what happened to the settlers. There are 29 footnotes to the first chapter alone.

“We have observations from some of the men at that time from surviving journals of John White and Thomas Hariot and other sources, but we have very little record of the women’s experiences,” said West in an interview. “I chose Eleanor Dare mostly because a big aim of this book was to widen the lens and look at some different perspectives on the commonly known history that we have on the Outer Banks.”

The other women featured with their own chapters are Chrissy Bowser, Irene Tate, Nellie Myrtle Pridgen, Carolista Baum, Cheryl Shelton-Roberts and Virginia Tillett.

Prior to the book’s conception, two of these women, Chrissy Bowser and Irene Tate were unfamiliar to the author.

Chrissy Bowser was selected as a post-Civil War African American landowner. West first learned of her while visiting Island Farm, a living history site on Roanoke Island that depicts life in the mid-1800s.

While making cornbread, a docent talked enthusiastically about Bowser, the Etheridge family’s cook, who went on to own property. “She started telling this incredible story of this woman,” West said. “I have spent my childhood out here and I have always had an interest in history, but I had never heard of (Bowser). So, that was kind of one of the ways in which one of these women was chosen for my book.”

Researching Bowser’s life was not easy. There are still questions surrounding some basic aspects of her identity, birth year, and whether she was born enslaved or free.

Articles and story sources West found in the local press mostly say that Bowser was born free, but West’s research, which involved poring through census records, marriage records and Freedmen’s Colony documents, did not reveal obvious signs pointing to that.

“So, instead of definitively coming down on either side, I wanted to just present the information as objectively as I could, and make the point that, hundreds of years ago, the details of certain people’s lives were well documented, and others were essentially considered insignificant,” West said.

Despite the many footnotes, 186, at the back of the book, the book is not a dry historical reporting.

West has a degree in creative writing with a concentration in nonfiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and a lifelong passion for history.

By way of introduction, West colorfully begins Chapter 4 this way: “The image of a woman striding alone on the seashore is called to mind at the mention of Nelly Myrtle Pridgen by anyone who knew her. The sight of her lean figure slightly stooped like a stock of sea oats, habitually combing the stretch of sand in front of her Nags Head home was as constant and reliable as the rise and fall of the tide for nearly seven decades.”

Pridgen, who died in 1992, actively opposed development on the Outer Banks and would walk every day gathering items that would turn into an invaluable collection.

How is this for a childhood memory:

West writes: “On the morning of September 12, 1900, there was an unexpected knock on the door of the Tate family, Kitty Hawk residents. They answered it to find their neighbor boy, Elijah Baum, standing with a strange gentleman who looked travel worn and weary. The stranger took off his cap and introduced himself as Wilbur Wright, from Dayton, Ohio. Little did the Tates know that the man they had received would become world famous, along with his brother Orville, for humankind’s first flight.”

Irene Tate was just three years old that morning, but the impact of his visit influenced the course of her life. She took to the sky herself becoming the first female pilot to fly round trip from New York to Miami. Her first time in an airplane predates that of the Amelia Earhart, who was also born in 1897.

Tate had many other accomplishments throughout her lengthy career, logging more than 50,000 flight miles and the chair of the Women’s Division of the National Aeronautic Association.

The writing and selected photos of this chapter makes one realize how remote and stark Kitty Hawk was at the turn of the 20th century — a far cry from what it is today.

The book is laden with black-and-white photographs drawn from many sources and which match the historical tone of the book.

Two of the better-known women garnering lots of popular press articles were Carolista Baum and Cheryl Shelton-Roberts. Baum is well known for getting in front of a bulldozer that was to level the high sand dune at Jockeys Ridge and replace it with a condominium project. She forced the workers to cease that day and the developer later agreed to its historical importance. Baum spearheaded the efforts to turn it into a state park.

Shelton-Roberts, the only surviving woman in this book, is a life-long lover of lighthouses and through much turmoil, played a key role in moving the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in 1999 to a safer location. Had she not been successful, the lighthouse would have fallen into the ocean. Whether to move the lighthouse or leave it to nature drew strong feelings on both sides. This chapter includes a lot of inside details, including Senator Marc Basnight getting then-President Clinton’s ear to secure funding.

This well written book is successful on two levels. The women merit inclusion for their accomplishments, and each chapter serves as a historical chapter on the evolving history of the Outer Banks.

The book is getting attention. It seems like almost every day someone is asking if a particular woman was included or will be in the next volume, West said.

I, along with many others, have suggestions for other women to be hailed as a remarkable woman of the Outer Banks. But having read this book, I would not substitute any.

West may oblige with further volumes, but that hasn’t been decided.

“Remarkable Women of the Outer Banks” is available for purchase at local independent bookstores on the Outer Banks, including Books to be Red, and through Arcadia Publishing’s website. For a full list, visit the author’s website at www.hannahwestwrites.com.

This story is provided courtesy of the Ocracoke Observer, a newspaper covering Ocracoke island. Coastal Review is partnering with the Ocracoke Observer to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast. 

Reprinted from the Ocracoke Observer

Even though he says his first attempt at decoy carving yielded “the ugliest bird you ever saw,” the folk-art form grabbed John Simpson back in 1975.

Simpson, who is the featured carver at this year’s Ocracoke Waterfowl Festival from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, April 23, at the Berkley Barn, is also the president of the Ocracoke Island Decoy Carvers Guild that he helped co-found in 2018.

This will be the fourth festival, which draws carvers and aficionados from all over the eastern seaboard.

In addition to organizing the event, Simpson will have a booth to show his carvings, many of which these days are shore birds.

But duck decoys are the main heritage of island carvers and that’s where Simpson started as a teenager back in 1975.

“I always enjoyed piddling with wood and my interest in carving took off by hanging out as a young person at Corky’s Store on Down Creek Road,” he said. “Wilbur Gaskill would sit on the steps carving little birds and sold them to visitors as novelty items for $3. He had me sit next to him and showed me how to carve.”

That first attempt at carving was “out of cork from an old coastguard life jacket and it was the ugliest bird you ever saw,” he said. “It was a scaup and I chose it because it was the easiest to paint with just white, gray and black colors.”

But he comes from a family of decoy carvers, so he couldn’t give up.

He is related on his mother Patsy Gaskins Simpson’s side to one of Ocracoke’s carving legends, Gary Bragg (1881-1954).

Since that self-described inauspicious beginning, Simpson has carved hundreds of waterfowl and shorebirds.

Simpson also paints two-dimensional works and even though he has honed that skill, he says painting his carvings is his toughest challenge.

“I know it might seem funny, but I have to be in just the right mood to do the painting,” he said.

A highlight of the Waterfowl Festival is to celebrate a featured carver who gets to choose the festival’s featured species, and Simpson chose the northern pintail.

Previous featured carvers, David O’Neal, Dan Robinson and Nathan Spencer, all attribute their love of the art and their carving skills to mentors, family members and neighbors.

Robinson, who was the chief at the Ocracoke Coast Guard station, took him under his wing, so to speak, teaching his carving techniques.

Simpson’s early carvings might not have been as bad as he describes.

At least one of them was an inspiration for last year’s featured carver, Nathan Spencer.

Some years ago, Nathan and his wife Janet cleaned out a shed for his cousin Patsy, Simpson’s mother. He came across one of Simpson’s carvings of a bird in flight that he made when he was very young.

“I brought it home and studied it and I thought, ‘I can do that,’” Spencer said.

It is not only carving, but Simpson has a love of the history of decoys and has built a personal collection of carvings by visiting many waterfowl festivals over the years.

“My first decoy festival goes back to 1975 in Virginia Beach,” he said. He immediately took to the fellowship of carvers, noting how helpful everyone was by sharing carving techniques.

Two of the most famous master carvers in North America are the Ward brothers, Lem (1896-1984) and Steve (1896-1976), who lived in Crisfield, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore.

Simpson fondly recalls meeting Steve at a decoy festival in Salisbury, Maryland, in 1975, who even at that young age, encouraged Simpson to become a carver.

Waterfowl decoys are now considered Americana folk art and some carvings have skyrocketed in price rising to the six and even seven figures.

Simpson’s island roots go way back.

His great grandfather, Joseph Merritt Burrus, was the second to last light keeper for the Ocracoke lighthouse and the last one to serve under the U.S. Lighthouse Service from 1929-1947.

Recently, thanks to some genealogical sleuthing by Philip Howard, Simpson discovered that he is an 11th-generation descendant of William Howard, the alleged quartermaster for Blackbeard.

Simpson graduated from Ocracoke School in 1978, in a class of seven. The following year, he took a job with the U.S. Postal Service in Elizabeth City, which led him to Washington state in the mid-1980s.

Upon leaving the postal service in 2013, he returned to Ocracoke and soon thereafter started a music show on WOVV, Ocracoke’s community radio station, that he continues today, now called “Classic Cuts and Such with John in the Studio,” broadcast from 6 to 8 p.m. Saturdays and rebroadcast Tuesdays from 2 to 4 p.m.

Simpson also has a thriving island fig preserve business with Trudy Austin. So, it’s not unusual at island events which include vendors, to see him with a large table covered with his artwork, carvings, fig trees and fig preserves.

The Ocracoke Island Decoy Carvers Guild’s mission is to pass on the fine art of bird carving to others and it holds monthly meetings to which all are invited to attend.

This story is provided courtesy of the Ocracoke Observer, a newspaper covering Ocracoke island. Coastal Review is partnering with the Ocracoke Observer to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast. 

Reprinted from Ocracoke Observer

The diamondback terrapin, an estuarine turtle seen throughout much of the Outer Banks, has a special niche in the Atlantic coastal ecosystem, being the only turtle in the world that inhabits exclusively the brackish waters of estuaries, tidal creeks and salt marshes.

But islands such as Ocracoke may not be as welcoming to them as in the past due to a highly aggressive and invasive exotic plant that is eliminating much of their nesting habitat and putting their future at risk.

There may be a way to fend off this threat and help ensure long-term survival for this handsome turtle (Malaclemys terrapin) with its spotted face, striking colors and variable patterns on its shell, but action will be needed.

Terrapins have faced many obstacles to their existence over the centuries. In one case, it took a constitutional amendment to save them from extirpation.

In the latter decades of the 19th century, terrapin “turtle soup” became a popular and trendy gourmet item on menus at high-end restaurants, private clubs and even at the White House.

The demand for this perceived delicacy led to excessive harvesting, and nearly caused the species’ demise by 1920.

In a quirky twist of society’s mores, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution that banned the consumption of alcohol during the prohibition era, benefitted the terrapin.

How could teetotaling have had such an impact? The key ingredient in a decent terrapin soup or stew was sherry, which became a banned substance under the 18th Amendment, ratified in January 1919.

With restaurants unable to use this Spanish fortified wine in the recipe, the soup lost its pizzazz and disappeared from the menus. This ended the terrapin soup craze and harvesting became nearly nonexistent, allowing their drastically dwindled numbers to begin to increase. By the time the amendment was repealed, culinary fads had moved on to other delicacies.

Although massive commercial harvesting is long gone, both legal and illegal wildlife trade as pets and food remain a problem and the terrapin has not fully recovered. It is listed both federally and in North Carolina and several other states as a species of Special Concern. The North Carolina Wildlife Action Plan considers it a priority species.

These days, in addition to trafficking, by-catch mortality from commercial and recreational crab pots, road crossing fatalities, pollution, sea level rise affecting coastal marshes and loss of habitat are the main causes of their premature deaths.

Unlike sea turtles, such as the loggerhead and the green turtle that spend their lives in the high seas with females only coming to land to lay eggs, terrapins stay close to shore in narrow Atlantic coastal estuarine habitats of tidal creeks and marshes.

Their range is from Cape Cod in the north, down to the coasts of Florida and along the Gulf Coast to Texas. Bermuda also has a terrapin population. With philopatric tendencies to remain in the same areas from where they hatched, terrapins do not make long-distance migrations. Females can lay two to three clutches of four to 24 eggs in late spring. The eggs usually hatch in 60 to 85 days, with hatchlings emerging from the nest in August and September. Sometimes hatchlings overwinter in the nest and emerge the following spring. During the cold winter months, they hibernate buried in the mud at the bottom of tidal creeks and marshes.

The bad guy: Phragmites in North America

Of the more than 5,000 invasive plant species embedded in North America’s ecosystems, phragmites, or Phragmites australis, is considered to be the most dominant and destructive. Also known as the common reed, it is highly aggressive and has many adverse effects on aquatic ecosystems, impacting native flora and fauna species. It is now found throughout the world, except for the continent of Antarctica.

The nonnative phragmites first appeared in North America in the late 18th or early 19th century, most likely brought over in ships from Europe, and has spread in wetlands throughout much of the continent.

Although there is a widely distributed but not very common North American native subspecies of phragmites (Phragmites americanus), it does not occur in the Southeast, which includes North Carolina. It is not the native subspecies but the invasive subspecies (Phragmites australis) that is the problem for terrapins and is found in abundance on Ocracoke.

Cassandra Cook cited many examples of this plant’s harmful effects in her College of William and Mary master’s thesis, “Impacts of Invasive Phragmites australis on Diamondback Terrapin Nesting.” Her research focused on Fisherman Island National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia.

Cook noted that phragmites reduces marsh habitat quality for terrapins. Its presence has been linked to decreases in the abundance of smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora), the aquatic plant found in brackish tidal marshes which hosts the marsh periwinkle (Littorina irrorata), a staple in the diamondback terrapin diet. Less cordgrass means fewer periwinkles for the terrapins to eat, thus making their foraging even more difficult.

Thick stands of phragmites creates an additional problem by lowering surrounding soil temperatures that can also jeopardize terrapins. The reason is that, like many turtle species, terrapins have temperature-dependent sex determination, meaning that the sex of hatchlings is the result of incubation temperatures. Cook found that a phragmites cover of greater than 50% causes a decrease in incubation temperatures of terrapin nests sufficient to produce predominantly male hatchlings. Fewer females mean fewer hatchings.

It is easy to identify phragmites by its height, which can be up to 15 feet. It has long, thin, green leaves and a large purple-brown flower head that turn silver in the fall. Despite its striking appearance, the scary part is subterranean.

Its rhizome stem system creates a root structure that can grow up to 60 feet in length at a depth of more than 6 feet. It spreads very efficiently, with new stalks growing off the roots. New locations can be infected through wind dispersal of its seeds.

In the spring, female terrapins look for sparsely vegetated sandy areas above the tide line to lay their eggs. When phragmites invade these open areas and takes root, the nest site is no longer viable. The plant also spreads rapidly right up to the waterline. This high density creates an impenetrable hedge that prevents terrapins from easily finding a suitable nesting site.

As their habitat diminishes, terrapins must travel longer distances to find a site to lay their eggs. Early one morning a few years ago, I saw one attempting to lay her eggs in the middle of the sandy, busy Southpoint Road on Ocracoke.

The longer terrapins search for a suitable nesting site on land, the more vulnerable they are to predation. Later, an even worse danger occurs for the hatchlings which are exposed for much longer periods on their long, dangerous maiden trek to a marsh or tidal creek. This makes them easy pickings for ghost crabs, gulls, crows, raccoons and other predators.

What can be done

Large-scale phragmites removal can be a bottomless money pit and, once the plant is firmly rooted almost impossible to completely eradicate. It is much easier to remove, or at least control, when detected in its early stages.

One feasible solution is a selective small-scale phragmites eradication process in areas where terrapins would most likely nest near water.

Cook agreed that a phragmites eradication effort could be effective. “Open it up and they will find it,” she said, noting that terrapins have nested on clear, sparsely vegetated dredge spoil islands.

Rob Emens also thinks this is doable. “I’ve been pushing for more phragmites management, just in general in North Carolina because I’ve seen what it does in states like Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia,” he said in an interview.

Emens, the aquatic weed program manager with the state’s Division of Water Resources in the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, assists local governments and other stakeholders with the removal of aquatic weed infestations.

Two herbicides, glyphosate and imazapyr, can control phragmites effectively when used individually or in combination. Careful use of these chemicals is vital to protect nearby native plants. Controlled burning and mechanical plant removal using small mowers, weed whips and brush hogs can be combined with these chemical applications.

By the time phragmites has been removed or greatly diminished, the chemicals are long gone, Emens said.

Unlike sea turtles, the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service currently do not track diamondback terrapins, according to their officials. These two federal services, in partnership with many federal and state agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and hundreds of volunteers, have made remarkable progress increasing the number of nesting sea turtles, especially loggerheads, on the Outer Banks in the past 15 years.

Fortunately, there is one ongoing terrapin research project in the state.

For the last seven years in May, volunteers, mostly in kayaks and canoes, have participated in a citizen science project, known as Terrapin Tally, to collect data to better understand terrapin distribution and density.

The North Carolina Division of Coastal Management’s North Carolina Coastal Reserve, partnering with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, North Carolina State Parks, Bald Head Island Conservancy, North Carolina Audubon, North Carolina Aquariums, and National Park Service, has spearheaded this important project.

So far, these surveys have taken place in the southeastern part of the state where phragmites does not have the densities of the northeastern region. Sarah Finn, a coastal wildlife diversity biologist with North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, said there are plans to extend the range of these surveys to areas farther north and could include Ocracoke if volunteers can be found. Expanding these surveys into areas where phragmites is present or appears to be increasing can help biologists understand the regional populations and determine if loss of habitat is a factor in decreased numbers.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation hosted a workshop a few years ago to discuss the development of a coastwide management plan addressing the spread of phragmites. Any plan should include the needs of the diamondback terrapin.

Losing nesting habitat to phragmites can be threatening to their long-term survival like turtle soup that appeared on menus more than 100 years ago.

Taking effective measures now can go a long way toward avoiding having the diamondback terrapin placed on the endangered species list.

We have a chance to take on the phragmites threat to terrapins in North Carolina and nip it in the bud, to use a terrible floral cliché. If we don’t take action, the consequences could be far worse than groaning at a bad pun.

This story is provided courtesy of the Ocracoke Observer, a newspaper covering Ocracoke island. Coastal Review is partnering with the Ocracoke Observer to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast. 

Reprinted from Ocracoke Observer

North Carolina will finally have its own comprehensive bird atlas, a project that will rely on many contributors such as recent college grad Matt Janson.

Janson, who this year graduated from Cornell University in environmental and sustainability sciences, is the northeast coastal conservation technician of a five-year project known as the North Carolina Bird Atlas that will catalog the size and distribution of North Carolina’s bird populations.

Since the 1970s, nearly every state across the country has undertaken these multi-year, large-scale, standardized surveys. Data collected during the study will help prioritize conservation efforts for the most imperiled North Carolina birds.

This citizen science project which began this spring is coordinated by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, which works closely with the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York. For the purposes of the survey, the state is divided into 937 “priority blocks,” areas targeted for thorough bird surveying.

Ocracoke is fortunate to have three priority blocks that combined cover the entire village, the South Point Road, Hammock Hills and the South Dock area at the north end.

During the breeding season, observers note if a bird is singing, carrying nesting material or feeding young. Some highlights Janson observed on Ocracoke this summer included a common nighthawk’s “booming” courtship display over South Point Road, a ruby-throated hummingbird carrying nesting material at Devil Shoals Road and nesting yellow-crowned night-herons in the village.

Other surprising birds found during the survey in northeastern North Carolina included singing sedge wrens in Beaufort County and a red-cockaded woodpecker family in Camden County.

Data collected by volunteers and the Wildlife Resources staff will be submitted through the eBird app, an online database of bird observations. 

Kris Smith, the Citizen Science Program manager with the Wildlife Resources, is the atlas project coordinator. Sarah Toner is the northeastern region volunteer coordinator and recruits those interested in contributing their own sightings to the survey.

Citizen science is important to the success of this bird atlas, Smith said in an interview, explaining how the process of connecting amateur observers and professional scientists aids conservation.

“There simply are not enough trained scientists or technicians to go out and survey everywhere,” she said. “So, we rely on volunteers who are knowledgeable amateurs and can input their observations online.” 

One Saturday morning, Sept. 25, more than 20 enthusiastic volunteers gathered at the parking lot of the National Park Service’s Ocracoke campground, receiving tips on using the eBird app and pointers on identifying local birds from Toner and Janson.

Over the course of three hours traversing the beach, dunes, Devil Shoals Road, the open trail of Hammock Hills and the pony pasture, a total of 40 species were tallied. Highlights included a merlin, northern harrier, warblers such as American redstart, northern parula, common yellowthroat, palm warbler, yellow warbler and a black-and-white warbler, a bobolink and a rare Traill’s flycatcher.

Whereas many states are limiting their compiled information to breeding-bird surveys, the North Carolina Bird Atlas will be more comprehensive, identifying migratory and wintering species, too. Only three other states — Connecticut, Maine and Oklahoma — have attempted a year-round bird atlas.

There are many reasons to track North Carolina’s birds.

A disturbing survey published in the journal Science in 2019 reported that North American bird numbers had declined by 3 billion individuals since 1970 or 30% of the continent’s population. This summer, a mysterious illness caused large-scale fatalities of certain mid-Atlantic songbirds including blue jays, American robins and common grackles.

The massive decline of North American birds is a dire warning about the planet’s well-being, according to a commentary in the New York Times following the Science article.

“Birds are indicator species, serving as acutely sensitive barometers of environmental health, and their mass declines signal that the earth’s biological systems are in trouble,” wrote the authors, John W. Fitzpatrick and Peter P. Marra.

Birds face a myriad of reasons for their decline. Spring and fall migration, always perilous, are even worse these days with the loss of stopover habitats needed for feeding and resting. Buildings are collision magnets, as large windows and bright night lights confuse navigation. Predators have increased, just waiting for an exhausted bird to rest.

Janson’s credentials for bird knowledge, field observation and citizen science contributions are impressive.

“I’ve birded in 49 states, not yet in Hawaii, along with several countries, including China,” he said.

While growing up in Charlotte, he joined the Mecklenburg Audubon Society and the Carolina Bird Club at age 12.

At 15, he was instrumental in forming the Carolina Young Birders Club and became a board member of the local Audubon Society chapter at age 17.

In college, he volunteered extensively in the summer of 2020 with New York State’s Breeding Bird Atlas.

Ocracoke has had a special place in his formative birding years, especially in 2014 when he saw this author’s post on the Carolina Birds listserv about two Snowy Owls that had shown up on Ocracoke that winter.

“My mother, brother and I decided to take a trip to see them, and we saw both,” he said.

Returning to the Ocracoke Variety Store that day, they ran into Ocracoke’s famed storyteller Donald Davis who along with his late wife Merle had earlier expressed an interest in seeing the owls.

“I remembered him from my elementary school days,” Janson said about Davis. “He gave a presentation on the art of storytelling. I just remember being enamored of his stories.

“So, when Peter heard my connection, he immediately deputized me and said we were heading back out to the dunes, and I would help find the owls for them. We did.”

For more information go to www.ncbirdatlas.org or send an email to ncbaregion1@ncbirdatlas.gmail.com

Reprinted from Ocracoke Observer

The red knot is an amazing bird.

Only about the size of an American robin and usually weighing under 5 ounces, it completes a marathon migratory flight.

Most of these knots, the rufa subspecies, winter in Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of South America.

From there, their 9,000-plus-mile route to their nesting area in the middle- and high-Arctic areas of northern Canada is one of the longest migration routes for a bird.  Although some red knots winter in the United States — with some most years on Ocracoke — Florida has the highest numbers.

These incredible migrants are also at risk of extinction, and information about their migration through North Carolina may help with population recovery efforts.

These shorebirds became a news story this spring when the annual red knot survey in the Delaware Bay region noted greatly diminished numbers.

This bay is a major staging area since red knots feed primarily on the normally plentiful horseshoe crab eggs before resuming their migration to the Arctic.

The dismal numbers — approximately 7,000 reported in the Delaware Bay area — signaled a significant decline in their numbers, which is about a third of those counted just last year in 2020 and the lowest since the early 1980s when the population was about 90,000.

Most of the blame has been attributed to overharvesting of horseshoe crabs for bait and biomedical products.

Other reasons for the precipitous drop cite climate change and sea level rise, coastal development, reduced food availability at coastal stopover areas, and human-related disturbances by vehicles, pets, low-flying aircraft and motorboats.

In 2020, horseshoe crabs did not arrive in the Delaware Bay when the red knots passed through due to unusually cold ocean waters.

Without this important food source, it is feared that many knots did not survive their long trek to the Arctic last spring, which would account for this year’s extremely low numbers.

Some theories for the low numbers suggest that when they do not find sufficient food sources one year, they may avoid those areas and find others.

Ocracoke Island and other areas of the Outer Banks have had good numbers of knots passing through in spring migration for the last couple of years.

According to information supplied by the National Park Service, a survey on May 12 produced a peak count of 1,100 red knots, surpassing the highest 2020 single-day count of 750.

The Core Sound area of the Cape Lookout National Seashore harbored 1,838 individuals on May 16, which, according to Meaghan Johnson, chief of resource management and science for National Parks of Eastern North Carolina, was the highest peak count in that area since 2016.

Significantly, observers noted a frenzied feeding behavior as the knots beefed up for their remaining long flight to the Arctic.

Considering the diminished numbers tallied in the Delaware Bay survey, the number of red knots passing through North Carolina becomes more significant, said Jon Altman, resource management supervisor at Cape Lookout National Seashore.

This view was shared by Larry Niles, an independent wildlife biologist who once headed New Jersey’s endangered species program. He has been monitoring the birds’ migration on the New Jersey side of Delaware Bay for the last 25 years. He has said that the best hope for the species to survive lies in a complete ban on harvesting female horseshoe crabs until the crab population recovers.

“We need to know more about red knot migration through North Carolina,” he said.  

It is not known whether these Tarheel knots stop in the Delaware Bay region following their Outer Banks refueling stop. It is worth considering attaching radio geolocator tags on some to track their movements to help identify important stopover locations and the length of stays during their epic migration.

To read more about red knots, visit Birds of Ocracoke: the Red Knot.

This story is provided courtesy of the Ocracoke Observer, a newspaper covering Ocracoke island. Coastal Review is partnering with the Ocracoke Observer to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast. 

This weekend marks the anniversary  of Hurricane Dorian’s landfall on the North Carolina coast, which resulted in devastating flooding on Ocracoke Island. Guest columnist Peter Vankevich, copublisher along with Connie Leinbach of the Ocracoke Observer, has collaborated with Coastal Review Online in publishing this look at how the storm has changed life for island residents.

OCRACOKE ISLAND — To modify a cliché, there is truth when saying “Ocracoke has weathered the storm … again.” Hurricane Dorian, the most recent hurricane to hit the island, could modify it with “barely.”

Ocracoke’s community has withstood major hurricanes over the centuries, sometimes in sensational fashion.

In early September 1913, a hurricane struck eastern North Carolina. A national news dispatch on Sept. 4 on that storm reported that all 500 residents on Ocracoke had perished. The story was based on someone seeing 30-foot waves in the Pamlico Sound.

To the credit of the press back then, the news report was quickly walked back and, in fact, not a single fatality occurred on the island. Nevertheless, that unnamed hurricane caused substantial damage throughout the eastern Carolinas. Erik Heden, the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Morehead City, pointed out that the 1913 storm was classified as a Category 1 event, which proves that category numbers are not a sole reliable indicator as to what a major storm can do in causing devastation.

“The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale measures wind speed only,” said Heden. “It doesn’t factor in storm surge and rainfall, which can have devastating impacts as we saw with Dorian.”

Ocracoke has withstood many powerful hurricanes, with names such as Gloria, Isabel, Alex and Matthew since 1953, the year the National Hurricane Center began using a preselected list of women’s names for Atlantic Basin storms. In 1979 alternating men’s and women’s names for storms began. Prior to that, there were other destructive storms, notably the Independence Hurricane of 1775, the San Cirioca Storm in 1899, the Hurricane of 1933 and the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944.

The many details of the impact of Dorian which closed the island to visitors until Dec. 2, are too numerous for this story but many more are available from the Ocracoke Observer.

Here are some of the  highlights:

• Dorian had a profoundly harmful impact on Ocracoke, causing a deep trauma — physical, mental and economic.
• By the time it made landfall on Hatteras Island, just above Ocracoke, on the morning of Sept. 6, it was far from being the most powerful, “just” another Category 1, with peak winds of about 90 mph.
• Dorian arrived well credentialed. It formed Aug. 24, 2019, and quickly rose to an extremely powerful and devastating Category 5 hurricane with peak winds at 185 mph. It is the most intense tropical cyclone on record to strike the Bahamas and is regarded as the worst natural disaster in the country’s history. The United States waited nervously as it headed west. Dorian skirted the Atlantic Coast of Florida then moved northward, causing relatively minor damage until reaching Ocracoke.
• Dorian struck at night on Sept. 5, and on Sept. 6, around 7:30 a.m., a 7.4-foot storm surge quickly tore through the village. Amazingly, there was no loss of life from this storm.

“There is significant concern about hundreds of people trapped on Ocracoke  Island,” Gov. Roy Cooper said in a press conference that day. “There are rescue teams ready as soon as they can get in.”

Cooper visited the island the following day to get a first-hand look.

Even before the storm had departed, several islanders took to their skiffs and piloted through the village making many heroic rescues of folks unable to get out of their homes.

It quickly became obvious that the assistance needed would be substantial and long. For various times, the only grocery store, the bank and health center were closed, and the electric power was down and an unprecedented warning went out that lasted for a few days to boil tap water before drinking or cooking with it.

Dorian’s high waves breached N.C. 12 at the north end, cutting off access to the Hatteras Inlet ferry terminal.

Ocracoke School flooded and classes were canceled. School officials worked feverishly to find alternative locations, ultimately using North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching, or NCCAT, facility, Ocracoke Child Care, and the upper floors of the school’s elementary section. But it would take a month before students could return to class. These locations that would last until COVID-19 on March 14 caused a shutdown for all state school buildings.

As the floodwaters ebbed, officials mobilized the Ocracoke Volunteer Fire Department as a command center. Many islanders showed up to volunteer and were quickly put to work, others arrived requesting assistance, noting their homes were destroyed or trees had fallen onto their houses.

The Ocracoke Control Group, Office of the County Manager, and Hyde County Emergency Management met to develop and implement a plan to deal with the disaster.

Ocracoke was not abandoned. In fact, it seemed like the whole state mobilized to provide assistance and donate goods. A host of state and federal partners soon arrived, including the National Park Service, the North Carolina Department of Transportation and its Ferry Division, the governor’s office, state Emergency Management and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The North Carolina Office of Emergency Medical Services set up a field hospital outside the health center, which was badly damaged and would take a few months to reopen.

Residents of Carteret County and mainland Hyde County filled their boats and delivered much-needed emergency supplies. Donated food, cleaning products and other supplies poured in via the ferries and filled the bays of the fire department with the firetrucks parked across the street.

The village quickly took on the appearance of a disaster zone with debris from flooded houses, many of which would be demolished, and downed trees lined the streets. Dozens of totaled vehicles were placed along the road, especially north of Ocracoke.

The National Park Service permitted the material to be taken to the parking lot of what is locally known as Lifeguard Beach and vegetation at a site near the campground. Both locations were massive, causing locals to declare the Lifeguard Beach parking lot as the highest point in Hyde County.

Ocracoke’s county commissioner, Tom Pahl, the keynote speaker at the Outer Banks Community Foundation’s annual meeting and luncheon on Feb. 20, noted that more than a third of the buildings on Ocracoke were severely damaged; 88 of 105 businesses sustained significant damage; hundreds of cars and trucks were totaled and 3 miles of road at the island’s north end destroyed, taking several weeks to repair.

Many individuals and organizations volunteered to help, including the American Red Cross and the faith-based Salvation Army, Samaritans Purse, North Carolina Baptists on Mission, and the United Methodists Committee on Relief (UMCOR). These groups went to peoples’ homes and removed downed trees, ripped out water-soaked insulation and performed many other tasks.

One of many heroes is the Outer Banks Community Foundation. It set up the Ocracoke Disaster Relief Fund and raised more than $1.2 million in contributions from about 6,000 donors. Organizations and individuals from all over the region and the country also sent contributions to the school and two churches.

Throughout the fall, there were many fundraisers, including the performing artists of the Ocrafolk Festival at the historic Carolina Theatre in Durham, and a lemonade stand set up by a 6-year-old near the North Carolina Seafood Festival in Morehead City, that got onto social media and raised nearly $9,000 for the school.

The governor returned Sept. 23 with several of his secretaries and top staff and they spent the day listening to the islanders and touring the village.

To pile on, a mid-November storm pummeled the Outer Banks with two days of sustained winds of more than 30 mph and gusts much higher that again wreaked havoc on N.C. 12 and caused the ferry system to suspend operations, resulting in a delay in reopening the island, which finally happened Dec. 2.

As the islanders struggled to return to homes and reopen their businesses, people started looking forward.

Hurricane Dorian caught the attention of Whitney Knollenberg, assistant professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at North Carolina State University. She focuses her research on the role of policy and planning and sustainable tourism development. She had previously done a study on Ocracoke’s tourism economy that was funded through North Carolina Sea Grant as part of their community collaboration research grants program.

“Reading the news about Ocracoke, I realized that Dorian would have a long-term impact on the island’s economy and a follow-up study was needed,” she said. “It (Dorian) really stood out to me as an example of an event that is going to continue to happen in places like Ocracoke, which are reliant upon tourism, and we are going to have to figure out how to address these types of changes.”

Knollenberg and three colleagues have received a grant from the National Science Foundation to identify the available information and resources for community leaders to make policy and planning decisions. The scope of her study has been expanded to include the COVID-19 pandemic.

The following are observations about Dorian from longtime Ocracoke residents who were here when it struck and have had experience with previous hurricanes, as recorded and transcribed by Peter Vankevich in early July.

Trudy  Austin

My name is Trudy Austin, a 10^th generation on Ocracoke here, graduate of the class of 1982. Growing up here, you heard the stories of all the storms on Ocracoke. And it seemed like you lived through them. I heard my grandparents and my mother especially talk about the ’44 storm.

Every hurricane season, my mom, like clockwork, would reflect on that day.

“That ’44, you know, happened during the daylight hour,” she would say. The day before it arrived, the Coast Guard taped up a warning notice right on the live oak tree there. Later, it was a beautiful starry night. And the next day, just so quick like Dorian, it hit. Someone came with a skiff and put her in it to save her. So, we grew up with all those stories, imagining that this would probably be the worst thing that we would ever experience in our lifetime or see once in a lifetime.

I’ve only left the one time in 1984 with Gloria that did a lot of devastation, that was the first time since 1963 that a little bit of water came in the back door.

Growing up, my sister, Tammy Tolson, and I always had hurricane shifts. This time with Dorian, Tammy was up from 2 a.m. until she come knocking on the room said, “I think the eye is going over. I’m gonna grab some sleep.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll just set up and watch the backside of the eye just to make sure.”

Then the surge arrived.

I actually had a chance to take three little videos on my phone from my front door facing the lighthouse and the back door, about 60 seconds apart. Then the water was up to my waist in the utility room on the third video. It was that quick.

It was the first time we had rising water in the house and because it is low, we made the decision to go to our rental property, Sabra’s Cottage, right behind us which is elevated 7 feet. We waded up to our necks and made it, soaked but safe.

And that’s when the boats were going by to rescue folks. It was very similar to how my mom described the ’44, but this water was definitely a lot higher than even what she’s always talked about.

Dorian’s impact? For hurricanes, my mom and dad were always prepared days in advance, they took each one 100%. Because going through the ’44, it changed their lives and their way of thinking, how to prepare for them. And Dorian has totally changed mine and talking with island people, they are now looking at hurricane season as if it is looming over you.

A lot of people are thinking not if we are going to get another, but it’s more like when we get one as bad as Dorian.

Dorian is my ’44. Yes, it is. Even though I think we got more to come. I’m hoping that, yeah, this is the ’44 for us to ever see.

Alton Balance

Okay, my name is Alton Ballance. My mother’s and father’s ancestors on Ocracoke stretch back to the 1700s. I graduated from high school here in 1974. I studied at UNC Asheville for two years and then at UNC Chapel Hill, getting a degree in English education.

Following that, after some time working on my book, “Ocracokers,” I taught in Hillsborough for two years. I then came back to Ocracoke School and taught for 20 years, including being assistant principal. In 2003, I joined the Ocracoke campus staff of the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching (NCCAT) whose mission is to advance teaching as an art and profession. I retired in 2017.

I’m also owner of the Crews Inn on Back Road.

I became a county commissioner in 1984. At that time, we had not had any hurricanes of any significance for several years, just a few little brushes. So, there had not really been any significant planning or preparation for hurricanes. But Hurricane Gloria that year got everybody’s attention and was, back then, the most destructive storm of my lifetime. The forecast was so ominous that all but about 100 people left the island.

With no hurricane plan, it was basically go to Dare County and evacuate with them.

So, one of the first things that I did following Gloria was to create a hurricane evacuation plan and a control group that included the chief ranger for the National Park Service, the deputy sheriff, people from the Coast Guard and N.C. Ferry Division supervisors, and others that had to deal with evacuation, reentry and things like that. And we became a very tight group and we would meet in my remaining eight years as a county commissioner and deal with other hurricane threats.

But nothing, of course, had we faced back then like we have in the last couple of years. Hurricane Matthew (2016) put maybe an inch of water in my old house in the heart of the village. It skimmed the floors and I was able to open the doors and dry it out with no damage to the floor anything else.

Hurricane Dorian was an entirely different benchmark. And we haven’t seen anything like that since the hurricane of 1944. It was a game changer in the sense of a tremendous destruction in terms of the flooding that took place. It allowed people to see what a storm of this magnitude could do to structures that were not elevated. It also compromised our transportation system with Highway 12 being closed and the Ferry Division at Cedar Island and Swan Quarter not being able to provide enough of a schedule to meet the demands of support vehicles, supplies, and just residence traveling in their normal course.

Dorian launched me into a very intense rebuilding of my two places. I had to rebuild not only stronger but also smarter. For example, all my receptacles are now 40 inches above the floor and there is no wiring underneath the house.

I do believe there is climate change; there is certainly global warming. And the one thing that opened my eyes the most of that was when I was doing an NCCAT seminar on sea level rise. We had one of the world’s foremost experts on glaciers, Bruce Molnia, come and talk to us. He had been an early student of Orrin Pilkey at Duke. That day that he showed us a 1960s photo of this glacier in Alaska, then photos of it from the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, 2000 and 2010. And he asked, “what happened?” Everybody said the glacier is gone. And then the next question was, “where did it go?” It melted. It went into the sea.

So, you know, the scientists like him who have devoted their lives to studying this on the ground, measuring and looking at the science of gathering the data, studying the weather trends and temperatures. They see it’s not really to be disputed that things have changed. Do you have heat waves and then cold waves? Of course, but overall, there’s that pattern that affects the dynamics of hurricanes. Hurricanes like warm water. They like heat. They’re drawn to it. So, there is the potential that we’re going to have increased hurricane activity.

I think Dorian forever changed our view of the power and potential of hurricanes. And here we are at another season. And I think some people are certainly much better prepared. Everybody is nervous, you know at what it might do, not just to individual homes and businesses and transportation infrastructure, but also to the economy, and how Ocracoke can sustain itself.

Philip Howard

Philip Howard’s Ocracoke heritage goes back to the 18^th century.  He is one of the island’s preeminent historians and publishes the online Island Journal.

My father and I built the Village Craftsmen on historic Howard Street in 1973 a few inches higher than high tide in the 1944 hurricane (the highest tide in living memory at that time). We have been documenting storm tides at there since Hurricane Gloria in 1985.

When Hurricane Matthew came ashore in 2016, it brought the highest tide we had ever experienced up to that time, 28½ inches above the ground. However, tide water did not enter Village Craftsmen.

Hurricane Dorian produced a storm surge of about 7 feet. The tide was at least 1 foot higher than the surge from the ’44 storm. It was 56 inches above ground level, and 27½ inches higher than Matthew, and 10½ inches of tide water flooded Village Craftsmen.

For years, islanders thought any first floor above about 4 feet above ground was safe from tidal flooding. Of course, we’ve learned that is not the case. The question now is, “Was Dorian a once-in-a-lifetime event, or is it the new normal?”

Since Hurricane Dorian, which damaged dozens of buildings (at least 50 have been demolished as I write), many homes and businesses have been elevated, and many more are scheduled for elevation. Flood insurance, often neglected as an unnecessary expense, is now embraced by nearly everyone on the island.

In many cases, recovery from Hurricane Dorian has required replacing floors, walls, electric outlets, household appliances, and furniture. Complete kitchens and bathrooms have been rebuilt, as well as entire homes. Hundreds of automobiles, as well as lawnmowers and other tools, were flooded beyond repair. In addition, many trees were uprooted and building pilings compromised.

Many islanders’ homes were so damaged that they were (and some still are) displaced because of the damage. In addition, Ocracoke’s transportation system (roads, ferries, docks, channels, etc.) continue to be threatened by storm surges, not only from named hurricanes, but from other seasonal storms as well.

I anticipate many more months to pass before everyone is fully recovered from the devastation from Hurricane Dorian.

Ocracoke residents and homeowners were the beneficiaries of numerous volunteer organizations and individuals who offered, time, expertise, comfort, and financial assistance to mitigate the trauma. Various governmental and public and private agencies have provided loans and grants to help homeowners and business owners. Many island businesses have reopened, but several are still closed while making repairs. A few have closed permanently.

As the 2020 hurricane season advances, I anticipate growing anxiety as we approach August and September, typically the most active period for storm development. Any major storms whose predicted tracks include the North Carolina coast will be cause for heightened concern.

Islanders have been acutely aware of global warming and rising sea levels for quite some time. Long-term solutions for individuals whose families have lived here for generations, as well as for relative newcomers who have built homes, established businesses, and immersed themselves in this community, can seem intractable. Few can imagine moving away. Family, friends, and a love for Ocracoke bind residents to this beautiful place. Homes, mortgages, business interests, and decades of involvement in the community keep people anchored to Ocracoke.

We can only hope that elevating homes and businesses, as well as staying informed about preparations for future hurricanes, along with local, state, and federal assistance in maintaining our roads and ferries (as bridges, tunnels, and roads are financed and maintained throughout the rest of the state) will help us deal effectively and creatively with any future storms.

Tom Pahl

Tom Pahl is the Hyde County commissioner for Ocracoke Township. He has lived on the island for 15 years and visited since a child. He is a licensed general contractor. His business, Landmark Designs, specializes in historic preservation. He witnessed the power of Dorian with his wife Carol at their home across from Silver Lake Harbor.

My experience with Hurricane Dorian was as an individual, a builder, as the county commissioner and chair of the Control Group. I was here during the storm and throughout  the long recovery stages. The storm had a significant impact on my business that I had to reorganize it to accommodate my  responsibilities  as the chair of the control group  and county commissioner.

I played a significant part of the decision to order an evacuation which is always focused on getting the visitors off the island. The reason for that is that following a hurricane, ferry services are suspended, and we have limited resources. We may have electricity, but it may be in limited supply. We definitely have minimal health care of any kind and food supplies are limited.

I’ve been involved in many of those decisions when we will issue an evacuation that includes residents. But we know very well when we do that, that we aren’t going to enforce it on them. It is just for the purpose of emphasizing to the residents of the island the importance of taking a storm seriously, especially if they have health issues or young children, etc.  The people who have lived here for years, know very well what’s involved with a hurricane.

If I could just suggest to the powers that be, have all our storms come during the daytime. It’s a lot less frightening when you can see what’s going on. A nighttime hurricane is a lot scarier because you can hear but can’t see. With a daytime storm, at least you can get some sense of its intensity.

In that early morning, we watched Dorian come in and didn’t anticipate that it was going to be any more nor less significant than a lot of hurricanes that we’ve been through. But then, we started watching the water come in. Normally, our experience is that the water kind of rises like in a bathtub. This water rushed in like a river, and that was the first sign to us that this might be a little bit different than what we’ve experienced before. There was whitewater in front of our yard. And it just kept on rising. It hit the Hurricane Matthew (2016) level, which was our high-water mark to that point, and then it continued rising for another foot and a half or almost 2 feet above Matthew. We saw breaking waves from the sound coming across Highway 12.

When it  came up to our top step and onto our porch, we suddenly considered our safety. We started moving critical things up to our second floor, not knowing when it was going to stop, but fortunately it did and reversed fairly quickly. It went out almost as fast as it came in.

Meanwhile, I was receiving text messages and phone calls about people around the island who were in trouble. I passed those messages along to the fire department. By that point, everybody knew we were in deep trouble.

The water dropped quickly enough that I put on a pair of chest waders and headed down Howard Street to see one of the families that I had got a message about that was in trouble. The new Methodist pastor Susie (Fitch-Slater) and her husband Tom (Slater) had apparently been driven up into their attic. I didn’t get very far and started to worry the still flowing current was strong enough that I would get knocked over. So, I went back and got a couple of walking sticks and sort of felt my way through the flowing water down toward their house.

Pastor Susie, I think, had only been here a couple of weeks. At that point, I had not yet been introduced to her. Their door had been pushed open by the water. I called out, you know, “Hello, hello,” and saw them sitting on their attic stairway. “Hi, Tom Pahl here. We haven’t met yet and I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m county commissioner and just wanted to welcome you to Ocracoke.”

I think it was funnier for me than it was for them.

By that evening, I moved from being Tom Pahl, private individual, to being a county commissioner. The State Emergency Management sent a bunch of people over by Blackhawk helicopter. And they brought county manager Kris Noble with them and so we began setting up an emergency operation that evening at the fire station and went full force on organizing the next day.

My life changed significantly in that I was basically working 12 to 14 hours a day on really two things: One was to create an organization that could manage the recovery, and then to being a part of that organization and managing the recovery, which was for the first couple of weeks at least, basically triage every single day.

Almost minute by minute, problems would come to us and we tried to decide which ones we could afford to push away for now, so that we could give our attention to the more critical ones.

It was a fascinating process and we had a lot of people step forward from the community who wanted to be a part of the recovery.

We had tremendous amount of donations from off island and how to manage them that was really one of our biggest jobs in terms of organization.

Dorian brought home to us, in a way that nothing else could have, the impact of climate change and what we can anticipate in the future. Our lives, our community, our economy, our social structure on the island have all been dramatically affected by the storm.

We need to think about the future of Ocracoke in ways that we haven’t before. We’re at the point now where we have to quit talking about talking about it and actually make some plans for the future and to work toward being the more resilient community because that’s our only option.

By resilience I mean it’s both physical and emotional.  Physically, if you drive around the island now, you’ll see dozens of homes that have been or are being elevated and many others that are going to be.

Emotionally, we need to be a community that understands what the challenges are coming and be ready for them.

I want to end by saying the level of generosity was heartbreaking. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I didn’t know  that amount of generosity existed in the world. It was a period of time when there was so much goodness flowing to this island that there wasn’t a day and in some days there wasn’t an hour that didn’t go by, where some act of kindness didn’t just cause tears to run down my face. I mean, people were so good and so kind, just overflowing with kindness and love for the island.

Reprinted from the Ocracoke Observer

Coming across a dead wild animal is not fun. But death is part of nature. In the case of birds, a small band on one of its legs can reveal a fascinating history as was the case recently.

Here is the story. On an early morning walk May 12 to Springer’s Point, I came across a dead royal tern on the small beach. A bit of blood was on the outstretched wing. It had a metallic band on one of its legs.

Bird banding is a method of tracking and identifying birds. It involves attaching a small, ring-like band of colored plastic or metal to a bird’s leg. Terns and pelicans are usually banded when they are young. Others, such as warblers, are caught in a mist net stretched between two poles.

Once the bird is in hand, the banding crew records information such as the species, sex, age and weight. The band has a unique number and the information is sent to the Bird Banding Laboratory, or BBL, in Patuxent, Maryland, part of the United States Geological Survey.

The BBL has a webpage to send the band code and the circumstances around finding it. When I attempted to send it, I got a red flag indicating my information may be incorrect and to double check. I did and finally it was accepted.

That was not the end of the story.

Soon after, I received an email about the royal tern with band number 1704-56701.

“When we compared the data for this encounter report to the banding data and other recovery data for the same species, we found that the age of the bird is unusual,” it said.

The message asked to send a photo of the band, which I did, and the record was accepted. I later received a certificate of appreciation stating the tern was banded as a young bird in 1995, which would make the bird’s age 25 years.

The master bander on the certificate was John Weske who has banded both royal and sandwich terns and brown pelicans in North Carolina since 1974.

Weske has frequented Ocracoke for many years specifically to do bird banding on Big Foot Island, which can be seen from the Cedar Island and Swan Quarter ferries. It was created in the early 1980s from sand dredged from Big Foot Slough Channel and is about 44 acres.

The dead tern I found was banded on a Department of Transportation dredge spoil island in Hatteras Inlet that has since disappeared.

“Back in the 90s it had sizable royal tern and brown pelican colonies,” Weske said. Two other North Carolina banded terns found in Belize and Florida were 30 years old.

The pursuing bird was not a jaeger, but a peregrine falcon that flew into the Springer’s Point’s maritime forest. The dead tern’s bloody spot makes me suspect that it was struck by the falcon.

A final note on bird banding. One of the first records of bird banding in the United States was in 1804 when James Audubon tied a small circle of silver thread to the legs of nestling phoebes at his farm that documented they return to their nest site.

Reprinted from Ocracoke Observer

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and a statewide stay-at-home order, Hyde County has begun work on how to safely reopen the county, said Kris Noble, Hyde County’s manager, in a recent interview.

“This week, we are beginning with the county’s health care workers, the health department, medical center and EMS as well as our partners like the Cross Creek Health Center and home care hospice services,” she said. “We’ll be looking at the plans other counties are doing and the guidance of the state to see what preparations will be required.”

As for how and when Ocracoke will be reopened, she said much will be contingent on what the state and Dare County do.

Following Gov. Roy Cooper’s press conference Thursday, Noble said there will be more information regarding access to the island by the close of business on Friday.

Noble said there is a plan in place should there be an outbreak of the pandemic in the county.

As of Thursday in North Carolina there are 7,608 cases of COVID-19 in 93 counties with 253 related fatalities and 486 hospitalizations.

Hyde County is one of the seven out of the 100 counties that has not had a reported case. The others are nearby Camden and along the western border: Avery, Graham, Madison, Swain and Yancey.

On March 17, Dare County closed its borders to visitors. Hyde soon followed and restricted access to the mainland and Ocracoke.

Dare County officials on Wednesday released a plan that will allow phased entry of nonresident Outer Banks property owners beginning May 4.

The Dare County Control Group has also extended the Stay at Home order for Dare County until May 22, meaning no visitors will be allowed back until at least then.

Masks will now be required in stores such as pharmacies and grocery stores, as well.

Reprinted from Ocracoke Observer

Sometime during the long, slow process of getting Ocracoke somewhat back to normal after Hurricane Dorian hit on Sept. 6, someone must have created a check list of what needs to be accomplished.

In the days following this devastating storm, for variable times, the island was without electric power, an open bank, grocery store, post office, school, library and a health center. The water was under a boil advisory. Through all of this, the island somehow got by.

One big and vital check in the accomplished column and good news for the island is that the Ocracoke Health Center on Back Road reopened in early December.

The building, like so many others, sustained damage for the first time from a hurricane, and that was right after the center just completed replacing all the floors.

Dorian set the health center back but didn’t knock it down.

After the hurricane struck, a first-aid station staffed by state and county paramedics was immediately set up in the Ocracoke Volunteer Fire Department, which served as the hub for all activities relating to the disaster.

And by Sept. 12, the North Carolina Office of Emergency Medical Services set up a temporary clinic in the health center’s parking lot.

“We’ve replicated Dr. Erin Baker’s clinic in the parking lot,” said Dr. Jeff Williams, medical director for the Wake County EMS who was one of a 10-member medical strike team on the island during the emergency.

The mobile unit, with three little emergency room-type bays with gurneys and portable dividers, initially was for urgent care, he said and the first aid station in the fire department was staffed with paramedics for less serious health issues.

By Sept. 24, the health center’s staff were fully trained to work in the “small box,” as Dr. Baker categorized the mobile unit, and they took over from the emergency relief teams. She was not able to do all the medical procedures that she can do in the building but said she could do a lot.

“It was really cool,” she said about having the mobile unit.

Ocracoke does not have a pharmacy and prescriptions are delivered weekdays from Beach Pharmacy in Hatteras village, which continued doing so after the storm, initially dropping them off at the fire department.

Hatteras village, including its pharmacy, also suffered damage but not as extensive as on Ocracoke, pharmacist Steve Evans said during one of his trips to Ocracoke. Water got into his building but quickly got cleaned up.

Three days after the hurricane, prescription delivery resumed via the Hatteras ferry, which used the passenger ferry route all the way into the Silver Lake harbor since a lengthy section of N.C. 12 was battered, closing access to the South Dock terminal.

“Steve was incredible,” Baker said about his diligence in ensuring the medications be delivered. Dave Quidley, with FedEx, also helped as a courier with LabCorps out of Elizabeth City. Part of a tag team, he would meet the first courier at the ferry dock and make deliveries to and from the health center.

Meanwhile, contractors and volunteers worked feverishly inside the building, mucking, again redoing the flooring, replacing the heating and ventilation system, drywall, rewiring data lines and extensive cleaning.

“I think all of the faith-based volunteer groups rotated through at one time or other to help,” said Cheryl Ballance, the chief executive officer.

While hurricane preparation involved the staff putting lots of items up high and covering them, some cabinets got flooded, Ballance said. So, in the rebuild, changes were made, such as having metal stands instead of cabinets and routing wiring along the ceilings instead of the floors.

“We could be going through this again with the global warming and climate changes,” she said.

Financially, the center did not suffer as much as others. “We had flood insurance and were able to get some storm recovery grants,” said Ballance.

Among Dr. Baker’s many concerns are those displaced from their homes and those who are older.

“They had one to two to three steps into their house and now they’re 12 to 16 steps in the air, which is a mobility impact,” she said. “And then of course, there is the emotional, financial and traumatic stress.”

A fundraising seafood festival for the health center, held Labor Day weekend, a week before Dorian, at the Berkley Barn, saw great weather and a good crowd. It cleared $95,000, Ballance said.

And they didn’t have to touch any of that for the Dorian repairs.

“Overall, I thought it was a very good festival,” she said. “We had a lot of volunteers.”

The center will designate that money for some future services to be determined and expects to hold another fundraiser again this year in late summer.

Reprinted from the Ocracoke Observer

It takes about a half hour by boat from Ocracoke’s Silver Lake harbor to the loading dock at Portsmouth village.

A group of birders took the ride in the early morning of the last day of 2019 to participate in the island’s annual Christmas Bird Count. This census started in 1988 and attracts between 15 to 25 participants who walk the village and beach identifying species and counting the number of individuals seen or heard.

A total of 18, though not all were hardcore birders, came over that morning. One was Allan Fairbanks, chief photojournalist for WCTI-TV 12 of New Bern. He was intrigued by both Portsmouth and the idea it would make a good story to cover the activity and provide a story on how Hurricane Dorian impacted the 20-plus structures. The news stories produced by WCTI-TV are available here and here.

Usually, Capt. Rudy Austin or his brother, Donald, of Portsmouth Island Boat Tours drops the birders off on the sound side to a long, empty dock, covered with broken shells dropped from above by herring gulls.

This year was different. Waiting to greet the group was Jeff West, Cape Lookout National Seashore’s superintendent and the park’s Lead Biological Science Technician Chelsey Stephenson and Evan Knight.

This count would be different in another way. The observers would get to see how changed the village was from the peaceful tranquility they experienced the previous December. Hurricane Dorian on Sept. 6 delivered to Portsmouth village the same 7-foot plus storm surge that devastated Ocracoke.

Portsmouth, part of Carteret County, was established in 1753 by the North Carolina Colonial Assembly and served as a point for shipping and fishing. Its heyday was the 1860s with a peak population of 860 residents who engaged in fishing and shipping and functioned as a lightering port, where cargo from oceangoing vessels could be transferred to shallow-draft vessels capable of traversing Pamlico and Core sounds to the mainland. Over its two centuries, there was never any electricity or running water.

The village went into decline as alternative means for getting goods to the mainland were used. The last residents left in 1971 and it is now administered by the National Park Service as part of the Cape Lookout National Seashore.

Over the centuries, Portsmouth has withstood many hurricanes, some a direct hit such as Isabel in 2003. The 21 structures remaining today include a post office/store, church, school and a large lifesaving station. The rest are mostly homes and a few sheds. On the edge of the village, ocean side, are the park service infrastructure buildings for a generator, maintenance and to store tractors.

West thanked everyone, saying the longtime data gathering from the bird counts gives people a good idea of what species spend the early winter there. Over the 30 years, nearly 200 species have been identified in varying numbers from year to year.

Heading into the village, which is still officially closed to visitors, the group stopped at the Salter-Dixon house, which serves as the visitor’s center, to leave some gear on the porch and get their coverage assignments. Flying overhead was a flock of white ibis, and a clapper rail could be heard clucking in the marsh. Absent this year was a Merlin which often perches on a nearby tree, serving as a sentry.

The birders divided into four teams, two headed out to the dunes and beach, the other two carved up the village. West stayed with one of the village teams while Fairbanks filmed him talking about the damage and recorded the count activities.

West is a high energy, hands-on, blue collar administrator who loves to talk Portsmouth. When Ocracoke islander Dave Frum retired several years ago as the village’s part-time caretaker, he was not replaced due to budget constraints.

To make up for it, West often spends weekends there landscaping and doing small but much-needed repairs. He knows every building in the village and their status. None of it is good news.

After Dorian, West headed to the village by boat to assess the damage and take photographs. All of the structures were damaged and some may have to be torn down, he reported. Soon after, 68 volunteers and contractors, making up the National Park Service Incident Management Team, descended on the village for about three weeks to assist in cleaning up debris and stabilizing the buildings. The Arrowhead Fire Crew from Sequoia, California, sent 23 of their members.

The George Dixon house suffered so much damage that it may have to be demolished, West wrote in a report in the Doctor’s Creek Journal, recently published by the Friends of Portsmouth Island. He chronicled damage to all the structures in the village, two cemeteries and the infrastructure of the roads and docks.

And it wasn’t only the buildings that Dorian impacted. Fifty-four new inlets were carved into the Cape Lookout National Seashore. Almost all of them have since been filled in, but four remain.

Birds in the village can vary from year to year, or for that matter week-to-week or even day-to-day. After heavy rains and there are puddles in the grass around the church, shorebirds such as greater yellowlegs, dunlin and a few species of plovers can sometimes be seen foraging. Not this year.

The only shorebirds were a flock of nine killdeer that flew overhead. The large majority of shorebirds for this count were observed on the beach and along the inlet, including 300 short-billed dowitchers and 350 dunlin. The ubiquitous myrtle warblers were present throughout in good numbers as usual.

The presence of birds in an area where they are relatively unscathed by human presence can bring surprises and this year yielded some. On the beach area of Ocracoke Inlet near Doctor’s Creek and the Methodist Church was a resting flock of American oystercatchers and 60 were visible with the use of a high-powered spotting scope. Oystercatchers, normally solitary or in pairs, can congregate in large flocks like this in winter.

Numbers like this are normally farther south and this count usually gets about 10 to 12 individuals. About an hour later, an adult bald eagle glided by that spooked them into flight which permitted a more precise count of 94 individuals. It’s nice  when a bald eagle decides to help a Christmas Bird Count.

“Ocracoke and Portsmouth provided the perfect landscape for breaking in our new Muck boots!” said Elizabeth Cisne and Janeen Vanhooke jointly when asked about the day. They traveled from Nebraska and Chicago, respectively, to participate. “This was our second time at Portsmouth, and the show put on by the American oystercatchers there was amazing. Never have we seen such a large flock of them in flight. Where’s the camera when we need it?”

The other amazing feature of the count was the high number of brown pelicans. Tom and Susse Wright of Ocracoke ventured out to the beach on foot. There they encountered a long line of brown pelicans that they estimated to be 5,000. Again, that’s a large number to be in North Carolina this time of year. To pile on, the Ocracoke count that took place the day before had nearly 2,000 pelicans. Brown pelicans have been increasing in the mid-Atlantic and expanding into the Chesapeake Bay.

Since the temperatures have been seasonally much warmer and there is an adequate number of fish in the waters, these two factors may explain why so many are still in the region and not farther south.

Another high number was 154 royal terns. There is a large nesting colony of these terns on the dredge island at Big Foot Slough off Ocracoke where the Cedar Island and Swan Quarter ferries pass. Again, most winter in the warmer waters farther south.

Another special find was a blue-headed vireo, photographed in the village by Jeff Beane, another longtime veteran of the count. This was only the fourth time this vireo has been observed in the 30 years of the count.

Spending the last day of the year on Portsmouth Island located in this “watery part of the world,” to borrow from the title of Michael Parker’s well-written veiled novel about Portsmouth, is both an adventure and a memorable experience.

Portsmouth Island Christmas Bird Count list for Dec. 31, 2019:

• Snow goose: 4
• Brant: 80
• Gadwall: 110
• American black duck: 74
• Mallard: 2
• Redhead: 7,000
• Scoter sp. (unidentified species)
• Bufflehead: 2
• Hooded merganser: 14
• Red-breasted merganser: 6
• Northern gannet: 80
• Double-crested cormorant: 2,225
• Brown pelican: 5,000
• American bittern: 3
• Great blue heron: 2
• Great egret: 5
• Snowy egret: 4
• Little blue heron: 2
• Tricolored heron: 7
• Black-crowned night heron: 7
• White ibis: 58
• Northern harrier: 10
• Sharp-shinned hawk: 1
• Cooper’s hawk: 1
• Bald eagle: 2
• Clapper rail: 17
• Virginia rail: 1
• Oystercatcher: 94
• Black-bellied plover: 61
• Killdeer: 9
• Willet: 1
• Yellowlegs sp.: 18
• Sanderling: 200
• Dunlin: 350
• Peep sp. (small sandpiper unidentified by species): 1
• Short-billed dowitcher: 300
• Ring-billed gull: 1,547
• Herring gull: 29
• Great black-backed gull: 58
• Royal tern: 154
• Black skimmer: 1
• Belted kingfisher: 5
• Northern flicker: 7
• Eastern phoebe: 6
• Blue-headed vireo: 1
• House wren: 1
• Sedge wren: 5
• Marsh wren: 2
• Carolina wren: 8
• Golden-crowned kinglet: 1
• Ruby-crowned kinglet: 1
• American robin: 64
• Gray catbird: 6
• Northern mockingbird: 10
• Cedar waxwing: 40
• Common yellowthroat: 3
• Palm warbler: 2
• Yellow-rumped warbler: 378
• Chipping sparrow: 3
• Savannah sparrow: 4
• Song sparrow: 2
• Swamp sparrow: 1
• Eastern towhee: 20
• Northern cardinal: 3
• Red-winged blackbird: 4
• Eastern meadowlark: 5

Reprinted from the Ocracoke Observer

Kids selling lemonade is part of summer Americana. Sometimes, one of those lemonade stands makes the news. This is one of them, thanks to the diligence of 6-year old Lilly Anderson, a first-grader at Tiller School in Beaufort.

Lilly’s parents, Rusty and Kim Anderson of Morehead City, were saddened by the devastation that Hurricane Dorian wrought on Ocracoke. Last year, they went through a similar experience when Hurricane Florence struck their area. They are long-time visitors to the island and Lilly has been visiting since she was an infant. When told of the flooding, she said she wanted to help the school buy books, crayons and pencils because she loves books and loves to read.

The family came up with a plan.

Lilly’s older sister, Sarah, now a student at NC State, used to sell lemonade when she was a child. Maybe Lilly could do the same and donate the proceeds to the school.

The family set up a cart and signs for Ocracoke School donations to sell lemonade, water and lollipops at a friend’s house where Sarah once sold her lemonade. This location was perfect for a huge number of walk-bys: It was about a block away from the North Carolina Seafood Festival, an annual event the first weekend in October in Morehead City that attracts about 200,000 visitors.

In its 33rd year, the festival has a tradition of the Blessing of the Fleet of the commercial fishing boats, and the proceeds are shared with community organizations who donate their efforts to the event. Last year, the popular event was canceled due the damage caused by Hurricane Florence.

“We thought Lilly would do it for a couple of hours and maybe she could raise $100,” said Rusty.

She amazed her parents by going from 11:30 in the morning until 10:30 p.m.

“You know, she never asked if she could she quit,” he said. “One of our friends fixed some chicken nuggets so she would sit there and munch on them in between selling and stuff.”

In the afternoon, Rusty posted a photo of Lilly at the lemonade stand and a little message about what she was doing on his business Facebook page, Anderson Plumbing and Sewer.

“People started sharing and liking it and asking how they could donate,” he said. “And then I reached out to some of the vendors and people that we do business with that may not have seen the post and told them what she was doing. And then they offered to donate, and then they told people about it and they donated. So it just kind of morphed.”

In the end, Lilly collected an amazing $8,718.90.

Rusty is a long-time friend of islander Norman Miller and has done plumbing jobs for him over the years and had another scheduled last Thursday. He contacted the school and asked Principal Leslie Cole if he could take Lilly that day to school and deliver the donation, to which Cole enthusiastically agreed to. Mother Kim had a poster-sized copy of the check made for a photo op.

The Anderson family, which included Lilly’s older brother, Tyler, stepped off the Cedar Island ferry that morning and went to the nearby North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching (NCCAT), one of the three locations the school is using while the school is repaired. They were greeted by Cole and Assistant Principal Mary McKnight. Several of the upperclassmen passed by and thanked Lilly for her great work.

From there, the family and school officials headed to Ocracoke Child Care on Old Beach Road where the Pre-K through second grade are holding classes. Lilly was greeted and thanked by the students. The first-grade students wrote individual thank you letters and handed them to her as new friendships emerged.

When she was visiting with the first graders, the intercom came on. Hyde County Superintendent of Schools Steve Basnight was patched in from the mainland.

“I’m sorry I can’t be there to thank you personally; to say how wonderful your gift is for all of us,” he said. “But I just couldn’t let the day go by without talking to you.”

It was a visit that the shy 6-year-old will probably never forget and she is proud of what she did to help the school.

“Lily keeps reading over and over the nice letters the students wrote,” said her proud dad on Saturday.

Like many others, Ocracoke School suffered substantial damage due to the historical flooding and it will not reopen for quite some time. In addition to this donation, the school has received other contributions.

Those wishing to make a financial contribution, can write a check to payable to Ocracoke School and mail it to: Hyde County Schools, Ocracoke School Donation, P.O. Box 217, Swan Quarter, N.C. 27885.

Reprinted from the Ocracoke Observer

Many talented musicians have stepped forward over the years to help those in need.  George Harrison and Ravi Shankar did in 1971 with their Madison Square Garden concerts for Bangladesh.

One of the most famous and successful was Live Aid in 1985, a world-wide effort that raised money and conscientiousness to the famine in Ethiopia. The concert has been immortalized in the Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

The musical trio Craicdown, in conjunction with the Carolina Theatre in Durham, has organized a benefit concert to support the Ocracoke community that was ravaged Sept. 6 when Hurricane Dorian struck the remote island.

The fundraising concert is at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 14, in the historic theatre’s Fletcher Hall. Tickets, $27.50, went on sale Tuesday and are available at the venue’s box office, at carolinatheatre.org and at Ticketmaster.com.

Proceeds from ticket sales will be given to the Outer Banks Community Foundation disaster relief campaign for Hatteras and Ocracoke Island.

Performers include Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba, Jonathan Byrd and the Pickup Cowboys, Chatham Rabbits and Joseph Terrell and Libby Rodenbough of Mipso.

“We’re just really thrilled that we have a time open, that it wasn’t too far off,” said Rebecca Newton, the theater’s executive director.

Craicdown’s Rob Sharer came up with the idea for the concert after hearing from those on the island and seeing news reports on the damage the hurricane wrought. For several days, the island was without power and the water had to be boiled before drinking. Most homes, businesses and vehicles were badly damaged or destroyed when a seven-foot storm surge suddenly overtook the village after dawn.

“Friends of mine were in their upper stories, watching their yards, and their houses completely fill up with water,” Sharer said. “It was physically painful to watch. Livelihoods and homes and possessions getting destroyed in real time. It was almost like I could feel the water coming in my own house.”

In particular, he was concerned about a beautiful 1908 Steinway piano that Marcy Brenner and Lou Castro had on the first floor of their house on Sunset Drive that he is love with and plays every time he visits.

“I waited a day or so because I didn’t dare ask, and when I did, Marcy said it got wet and the keys are swelling together, so that might be it for the piano,” he recounted. “She sent some pictures, and I just started freaking out.

“The piano just seemed so emblematic of what was going on down there. You know, things that I love, were getting destroyed. And I wrote to her and I said, ‘Is there anything I can do? Do you want me to come down and bring you a dehumidifier, or anything like that?’ And she said, ‘Oh, sweetheart, just play some music.’

“What could that mean? That could mean lots of different things. I mean, just sending vibes out there. No, let’s do something more. So really, that was the genesis of this benefit concert.”

Sharer and the trio’s other two members, David DiGiuseppe and Jim Roberts, have a spiritual connection to the island. Craicdown has performed at the Ocrafolk Festival for the past 11 years. The festival, which began in 2000, takes place annually on the first full weekend in June. Craicdown has also given musical workshops at the school over the years.

“So, it really is like the spiritual home of the band,” Sharer said. “It’s our home away from home. We’ve written songs and made great friends out there. And it’s just a magical, enchanted place that I look forward to going to every year.

“The very thought that something terrible has happened to the place and to the people that we love so much, how could you not do something? So, this was thing that I thought I could do. You know, I can’t hold the waters back, but I can organize a concert.”

On the stage that night will be Jonathan Byrd, a seventh-generation Carolinian. He is a preacher’s son and sang “Amazing Grace” solo in church when he was a young boy. He has recorded many albums, with his most recent “Pickup Cowboy.” His songs are about strong characters, tough times and filled with powerful lyrical imagery.

The performers Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba, Chatham Rabbits and Joseph Terrell and Libby Rodenbough of Mipso have all performed at the Ocrafolk Festival in the last several years.

Will Ridenour is the percussionist for Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba, a high energy rhythmic dance band that can also do soothing story songs.

“Every time we go to Ocracoke, we’re just met with a really amazing community,” he said. ”And so, yeah. When I found out that they were hit hard by Hurricane Dorian, you know, the first thing you as a musician to think is ‘I want to put on a benefit because I to share my music to help raise money.’ So when Rob asked us, it was hands down, ‘Yes, right away.’”

Diali Cissokho (first name pronounced “jelly”), originally from Senegal, West Africa, is the band’s lead singer and master of the kora, a 21-string instrument. He has taught students about African music during arts week at Ocracoke school that takes place every spring for the past several years.

Chatham Rabbits are a husband and wife duo, Sarah Osborne McCombie and Austin McCombie. From Bynum in Chatham County, they took their name and music inspiration from the original Chatham Rabbits, a local mill string band of the early 20th century.

Joseph Terrell (guitar and vocals) and Libby Rodenbough (fiddle and vocals) are part of the music group Mipso. Defined as an indie Americana quartet, their music has been described as “full of wistful beauty, hopeful undercurrents, and panoramic soundscapes,” and combining classic folk-rock and modern alt-country sounds mingling easily with Appalachian tradition.

Also on stage will be Marcy Brenner, who with her husband Lou Castro, are the recording artists, Coyote. She is a former director of the Outer Banks Community Foundation. In addition to the piano casualty, their Coyote Den, located on the dock at the Community Square also suffered substantial damage.

Not listed officially as performers, it wouldn’t be surprising if Craicdown, in some fashion makes it to the stage.

If you cannot  attend and still want to support the musicians’ efforts, you can donate directly to the Outer Banks Community Foundation. In the donor information line, add Music Folk for Ocracoke.

Reprinted from the Ocracoke Observer

Dan Robinson always loved the outdoors.

Growing up in Beaufort County, he and his friends did just about everything outside, but he especially loved duck hunting, leading to a lifelong passion that has made him one of Ocracoke’s renowned decoy carvers.

He is this year’s featured carver at the second annual Ocracoke Waterfowl Festival from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday in the Ocracoke School gym, where carvers and collectors from up and down the eastern seaboard will pack the tables with decoys and artifacts related to the region and especially North Carolina’s rich waterfowl tradition.

“When growing up in Core Sound, the redhead was the king duck,” Robinson said about the species he chose for this year’s featured carving.

“They would show up around Thanksgiving in the thousands and everyone would be waiting for them. There were a lot of lawyers and big businessmen from New York City that would come down to gun.”

As a youth, he didn’t try to use decoys when duck hunting, but if he came across one or more in the marshes, he would set them.

A retired Coast Guardsman, Robinson’s interest in decoy carving developed by way of family.

“In 1960, I married my wife, Jean, who’s from Stacy,” he said. “Her daddy, Eldon Willis, was a decoy carver along with his good friend Elmer Salter. I watched them and thought, I think I can do that.”

The first decoy he carved, which he still has, is a Bufflehead made in the early 1960s.

“At that time, I was stationed at Cape Lookout and if you had duty on a Sunday, you had two hours to do what you wanted to do,” he said.  “One day I decided to walk on the beach and pick up some driftwood and make a decoy. I found some juniper (aka red cedar) and got some balsa wood.

“There was not a band saw so I had to use a coping saw to cut most of it out. Then I went to carving this thing with the dullest knife you had ever seen, and I cut myself tremendously.”

Nor did he have any paint, so he used some Coast Guard paint — dark green, black and white colors, all enamel.

“When I got through with it, I said ‘I ain’t never making another one of them things,’” he said, laughing.

But he did continue making decoys. Lots of them. While on the ships during his Coast Guard career, he didn’t have many opportunities to carve, but he could when on shore duty.

“One time I was assigned to the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, teaching rigging and sailboats to the cadets,” he said, showing a male and female red-breasted merganser he carved while stationed there.

Around 1966, when assigned to the Sea Level Station, Robinson’s carving interest took off and he started to develop his own style. One of his carving styles is a thinner head for red-breasted mergansers.

He moved to Ocracoke in 1974 and built his house behind Blackbeard’s Lodge.

Later, when he retired from the Coast Guard to live full time on the island, Doward Brugh, the owner of Blackbeard’s, needed a maintenance man and hired Robinson, who has worked there ever since.

“I’m never going to retire,” he laughed. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”

Last year’s festival’s featured carver, Dave O’Neal, also began carving while in the Coast Guard.

“Dave was in the Coast Guard over at Hatteras as was my son, Dale,” Robinson said. “They would carve together, which is how I got to know him.”

His other son, Scottie, is also a skilled carver and all three will have tables at the festival.

These days, Robinson carves roughly 30 decoys per year, using primarily juniper, white pine and tupelo wood.

“I’ve carved working decoys in the past, but now do decoratives,” he said. “People will ask me to carve a particular duck and I also carve others and bring them to waterfowl festivals,” he said.

About Ocracoke Waterfowl Festival

Carvers and collectors from along the eastern seaboard will pack the Ocracoke School gym for the second annual Ocracoke Waterfowl Festival 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.

The more than 30 vendors will display carvings of redheads, ruddy ducks, blue bills, swans, geese, shorebirds and more, along with artwork and artifacts related to North Carolina’s rich waterfowl tradition.

There will be plenty of food, kids decoy painting sessions, raffles and a decoy head-carving contest.

The clam chowder cook-off, a fundraiser for Ocracoke Child Care, will be part of the food offerings this year, along with fish sandwiches, desserts and more. T-shirts, hats and a poster will also be on sale.

The event is presented by the nonprofit Ocracoke Island Decoy Carvers Guild,which formed in early 2018 to preserve this art form in Ocracoke history. About 600 attended the first event in 2018.

Festival parking will be at the National Park Service parking lot at Pilot Town Road and Irvin Garrish Highway, near the ferry docks in the village. A free tram service will be running from the parking lot to the festival and back all day.

For more information about the festival, visit Ocracoke Island Decoy Carvers Guild, email Decoysjohn@gmail.com, or call 509-930-4988.

Organizers recommend checking the ferry schedule if you plan to travel to Ocracoke via Swan Quarter or Cedar Island.

This story is provided courtesy of the Ocracoke Observer, a newspaper covering Ocracoke island. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Ocracoke Observer to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast. 

Reprinted from the Ocracoke Observer. Read an earlier story about this swan.

The young trumpeter swan’s two-month sojourn on Ocracoke appears over. May 2 was the last time it was reportedly seen where it had been feeding for the last two months along Southpoint Road. Should, by chance, it reappear, we will post an update.

This species, the largest North American waterfowl with an 8-foot wingspan and weighing up to 32 pounds, was a highly unusual avian visitor, in the league of the two Snowy Owls that spent the winter on the island’s dunes in 2014.

It was first brought to my attention by Denny Dobbin. A frequent visitor from Chapel Hill, he sent a text that he saw a swan at dusk in the ditch along South Point Road on March 5 and watched it fly in the direction of Springer’s Point.

Subsequently, many people noticed the swan as it adopted the marsh area near the beginning of Southpoint Road. It was seen daily, sometimes at a distance at the back of the marsh, other times, close to the sandy road, permitting many striking photographs. It became a favorite for social media posters on Facebook.

When first reported, many — including myself — assumed it was a tundra swan (Cygnus columbianus). Although not common on Ocracoke, tundras have never been reported on the islands Christmas Bird Counts which have run since 1981. They winter in large numbers in the region, particularly in the Lake Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge area of mainland Hyde County and the Pea Island Wildlife Refuge on the Outer Banks.

Up until now, trumpeter swans (Cygnus buccinator) have not been reported on the Outer Banks.

While adult trumpeter and tundra swans can be identified by the tundra’s yellow lore, which is the space between bill and the eye, subadults can be more challenging. Since this was a first-year bird, called a cygnet, several field factors had to be considered to determine that it was a trumpeter.

Size can be a factor when the two species are together since trumpeters are larger and longer necked, but when a bird is solo, determining its species takes more observation. The plumage of a trumpeter cygnet is darker and the forehead has a V-shaped border while the Tundra has a U-shape.

But the best diagnostics is voice. Trumpeter swans make a soft honk, sometimes in a series of two to three notes “do-do-doo” that has been compared to a trumpet, hence its name. Tundra Swan calls are varied and include various bugling notes and a whistle sound. North American Tundra Swans were formerly known as Whistling Swans.

This video was made on a windy day by Beth Layton that provides its call. You might need a headset to hear it.

“I listened to the video,” said Margaret Smith, executive director of the Trumpeter Swan Society. “It sounds to me like a cygnet distress call, calling for other swans. When it makes repeated short calls like that in my area, usually the cygnet is separated from its family and calling for it, not loud, just repeated.”

It is noteworthy that this swan appeared on the island after a nor’easter, but it’s a mystery as to where it was previously. In migration, first-year trumpeter swans normally flock with their parents and other swans. This one had no bands that could provide some information.

Perhaps the storm caused it to be separated. Once it arrived on the island, it appeared to be healthy with a good appetite, spending long portions of the day feeding on the marsh vegetation. It was also very vocal, making single call notes.

When the cygnet was still on the island a few weeks after the Tundra Swans in the region had left for nesting in the far north, I wondered whether a young bird, separated and alone, has an instinct to migrate and if it could survive the hot temperatures of an Ocracoke summer.

I turned to the Trumpeter Swan Society, Plymouth, Minnesota. For the past 50 years, this nonprofit has been an important resource for providing expertise, research, monitoring, funding and on-the-ground support toward every major trumpeter swan conservation effort, restoration project and management activity.

“We don’t know if the swan will migrate or not,” said one of their biologists, Dr. Gary Ivey, on April 26. “It is pretty late in the season to be migrating and it very well could, but it may stay there all summer until next fall’s wintering swans come down.” He also noted it would not be too warm for the swan spend the summer here.

Here is a little history on this swan and its amazing comeback.

Once common across most of the northern United States, by the 1880s trumpeter swans had pretty much disappeared, having been hunted for their meat, soft skins used in powder puffs and feathers for quill pens and hats.

The Passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 gave protection to trumpeter swans and many other bird species and helped curb illegal killing.

But whereas many endangered birds made a comeback under this act, it did not help the trumpeter swan. By the early 1930s, only 69 trumpeter swans were known to exist in the lower 48 states in a remote location of Yellowstone.

The Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in a 1949 report considered trumpeter swans “the fourth rarest bird now remaining in America.”

Here is where the good news begins. In 1956, Melvin Monson, a scientist with the Fish and Wildlife Service, published an article in the ornithology journal, “The Condor,” that a previously unknown population of trumpeter swans was discovered in the lower Copper River Basin of Alaska.

As more trumpeter swans were discovered in Alaska and western Canada, by relocating some of the swans and eggs from these areas, restoration efforts in the 1960s began in earnest by states and provinces.

In 1968, the first North American Trumpeter Swan Survey (NATSS), a major cooperative effort by federal, state and provincial governmental agencies, took place. A tally of 2,752 swans were reported. The next survey in 1975 reported 3,727 individuals. The survey now runs on five-year intervals and it has shown significant increases with each survey. The two most recent are 2010: 34,249 and 2015 nearly doubling, 63,016. The big increase is in Alaska. However, the midwestern (Mississippi and Atlantic Flyways) population increased significantly as well with a count of 26,591.

‘The Carolina Bird Club provides a wealth of information and photographs of birds of the Carolinas. It produces a journal, the Chat, and a records committee that reviews reports of rare birds.

The following are some edited Trumpeter Swan records and reports available on its website:

• A group of four trumpeter swans was banded on Feb. 25, 2004, at the Pungo unit of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff. This is a first record for the state. The Committee reviewed many websites and email correspondences regarding re-introduced populations in the East and Midwest. The general feeling was that the birds were probably not vagrants from the natural range in the Far West but rather from populations in the Great Lakes region.
• A subadult was photographed on Jordan Lake, Chatham Colorado, on Dec. 19, 2013. Another was seen in the Pungo Unit of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge border of Hyde and Washington counties, on Feb. 7, 2014. It’s not certain whether these two sightings were of the same bird.
• Two were seen in the Pungo Unit of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, Hyde County, in January 2015.
• Two were seen at Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge, on December 20, 2015.
• In the Pungo Unit of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, Washington County, a high count of three was made Jan. 14, 2017.
• A report of a subadult trumpeter swan on the French Broad River near Alexander, Buncombe County, was made on Dec. 25, 2016 and stayed through March 27. If accepted, it would be the first record of this species in the mountain region.

The cygnet made an impression on many.

Beth Layton, the Ocracoke high school math teacher, was one of them.

“I first saw the trumpeter swan on March 17 – Saint Patrick’s Day – and I felt lucky indeed,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I whispered ‘thank you, God!’ when I got my first glimpse.

“Almost every day after school, I walk several miles. Usually I go to the beach. If the wind is too bad, I’ll walk in the village. Once the swan arrived, I always started my walks on South Point Road. It was mesmerizing, calming, fascinating,” she said. “And now he has left us, and a little part of me is sad to know that he won’t be part of my daily walk. What I really want to know now is that he made it safely to wherever he belongs, that his instincts led him back there. This experience with the trumpeter swan feels like yet another gift in my time here on Ocracoke.”

Margaret Smith, who has been following the updates I have been sending her, finds the cygnet’s presence here intriguing.

“It is exciting to get reports of swans in the eastern United States,” she said. “Trumpeter swans are slowly but surely finding their way to new areas in the Atlantic Flyway. You are seeing the pioneering swans making history in your area! How absolutely thrilling.”

So where is the swan now? We hope it has headed to somewhere in the Midwest to join other trumpeters. Since this cygnet is so large, perhaps we will hear of a report of a sighting on its way.

North Carolina might see more of these swans with the increase of nesting birds about 1,500 or so miles away, instead of a rare stray from Alaska.

Maybe it will return next winter to Ocracoke and bring a few friends. The small marsh where it spent time here appeared to be a suitable habitat.

This story is provided courtesy of the Ocracoke Observer, a newspaper covering Ocracoke island. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Ocracoke Observer to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast. 

Reprinted from the Ocracoke Observer

Birds are amazing in that they may be found in the most extreme habitats.

One of these is the snow bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis). They have the distinction of being the most northerly passerine bird in the world, breeding on the rocky tundra in the utmost levels of the circumpolar arctic.

Migratory birds, the males, from “balmy” areas such as southern Quebec, return north in April when the weather is still freezing and snow present.  Females wait four to six weeks before venturing to their nesting grounds.

Speculation as to why the males arrive so early is that they compete to secure a nesting site amidst a limited number of crevices in the rocks that will be safe from predators and near vegetated tundra for feeding.

Because the rocks are cold, the female will line the nest with moss, fur and feathers to help keep the eggs and nestlings warm. The female must remain on the nest for most of the incubation period while the male feeds her. They also nest in artificial sites including buildings, barrels, cans and stone foundations.

Their winter habitat includes open weedy, grassy and plowed fields, grain stubbles, roadsides and farm yards. They can also be found on shores, beaches and dunes.

In the East, they sometimes can be seen in mixed flocks with horned larks and Lapland longspurs.

They are most likely to be seen on the upper Outer Banks from late October into March. Although not unusual to be seen on Pea and Hatteras islands, they are rare on Ocracoke, Portsmouth and points below. Ocracoke’s high school math teacher, Beth Layton, discovered this bunting on a late afternoon walk last winter.

Predators that will kill the birds or take the eggs in these remote parts of the world include gyrfalcons, peregrine falcons, long-tailed jaegers, snowy owls, short-tailed weasels and Arctic foxes. Its most dangerous foe, however, is adverse weather that can lead to freezing and starvation.

The female usually lays four to seven eggs starting in mid-June and incubation is only about 10 days. Both parents feed the nestlings, which fledge within about two weeks.

During breeding season, males are white with a black back, wingtips and bill. The female has the same coloration pattern but is reddish-brown instead of black.

In flight, the clear contrast between the white and black of the wings is evident. The female resembles the male, but has a grey-brown head and back. Both sexes have a black bill and legs. In winter plumage, the male has brownish upper-parts that have black streaks. The crown, sides of the head and the breast have a yellow-brown tinge. The female in winter plumage is more buff than in summer. The bill of both sexes is yellow during winter.

The song has been described as short, but musical, bold and loud for size and with fair variety of phrasing. Typical version might be rendered “turee-turee-tureet-turiwee.”

These are ground birds, sometimes seen individually but often in flocks of up to 100 or more. Their primary food source is seeds of grass and weeds. During breeding season, they will also feed on invertebrates.

Snow buntings were hunted in the past for food. A  New York Times article in 1903 noted a person on trial in violation of a state law for possession of 30,000 dead birds harvested in Canada.

Because of their remote breeding range in the high arctic and their nomadic habits during winter, they have not been closely studied.

Best time to see: Unusual but possibly mid-fall through winter

Where: Beach and dunes, pony pasture

A curious note about this species is that John James Audubon in his “Birds of America,” first published as a series in sections between 1827 and 1838, noted that only a single nest of this bird had been found within the limits of the United States (Alaska was not yet a state).

“It was seen by J. Wright Boott Esq. of Boston, on a declivity of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, in the month of July 1831. That gentleman described it to me as being fixed on the ground amid low bushes, and formed like that of the Song Sparrow. It contained young ones.” Boott was a prominent, though eccentric and troubled, Bostonian who had a passion for plants, especially orchids. He discovered a small previously unknown species of Prenanthes that is now known as Alpine Rattlesnake root, Prenanthes boottii.

This story is provided courtesy of the Ocracoke Observer, a newspaper covering Ocracoke island. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Ocracoke Observer to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast. 

Reprinted from Ocrocoke Observer

OCRACOKE — Dave Frum recently motored his small boat to Portsmouth Island for the last time recently. On May 23, he retired as the National Park Service’s part-time maintenance man for the last 28 years.

His solitary stewardship of the abandoned village has been a labor of love.

Like many islanders, taking care of Portsmouth was his second job in addition to his work at Ocracoke’s water plant.

Frum’s work over these many years did not go unnoticed.

At the Friends of Portsmouth Island spring meeting in May at the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching, or NCCAT, facility here, he was presented an award for his dedicated service.

Frum was the first to see the damage Hurricane Isabel did to the village in 2003 and wrote a feature of it in the Ocracoke Observer newspaper back then. The eye of that powerful storm passed over Ocracoke Inlet.

“It was devastating,” he said.  “Trees were down everywhere, the dock was torn up and there was lots of damage to several houses including those of Henry Piggott and George Dixon, and the Life-saving Station,”

The next year, Hurricane Alex hit with major flooding from the Pamlico Sound causing more destruction.

“With those two storms, I spent a lot of time clearing brush and doing repairs,” he said.

As Portsmouth is part of the National Seashore, no chemical control for mosquitoes is done on any Park Service Land and he does not use mosquito spray. So, in spite of the village’s notoriety for mosquitoes, Frum has the non-chemical solution.

“The best deterrent to handling mosquitoes is to ignore them,” he said laughing. “Unlike what many believe, they are not horrible all the time.”

Frum takes exception to Portsmouth’s description as a ghost town.

“Ghost town implies that the village is dead, which it is not,” he said. “It’s vibrant. I feel the spirit of the village’s past like no other place.”

On Portsmouth and often the only person present, he hears the distant roar of the Atlantic Ocean at times as well as the silence while communing with nature.

“I’ve loved every bit of it,” he said. “Every day I witnessed the wildlife, like Great Horned Owls raising their young in a tree in the village, otters playing in the creeks and the Indigo Buntings passing through in the spring.”

This story is provided courtesy of the Ocracoke Observer, a newspaper covering Ocracoke island. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Ocracoke Observer to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast. You can read more Ocracoke news here.