Volunteers clear a pathway from the nest to the ocean at Emerald Isle for the turtle hatchlings. Photo: Teri Saylor.

EMERALD ISLE — On a damp August evening at the beach in Emerald Isle, a lull between downpours brought a group of men, women and children to the base of a dune marked off with bright pink plastic strips tied to four wooden stakes.

Three nights earlier, a sea turtle nest had hatched, sending a flood of baby turtles boiling up to the sand’s surface for their slow trek to the sea.

A dozen volunteers with the Emerald Isle Sea Turtle Project and about 50 spectators gathered to excavate the nest, eager to see how many eggs were inside and hoping to find more live hatchlings.

As Marsha Horner and Louise Ehrenkaufer dug into the nest with hands clad in blue rubber gloves, spectators celebrated and softly cheered for five little ones that had not made their way out of the nest when their brothers and sisters hatched earlier in the week.

Ehrenkaufer retrieved the hatchlings while Horner counted 81 empty shells.

A family vacationing from Virginia had been on the beach at 11 p.m. the night the eggs hatched.

“The baby turtles were very cute,” said Maggie Roberts of Alexandria, Va. “They scooted along the sand and used their little flippers to go and go. When they first hit the water, they tumbled over in the waves, but they figured it all out.”

Jenny Adams of Norfolk, Va., who had volunteered to count the tiny creatures as they came out of their nest, could barely keep up with them. “It was amazing,” she said. “I watched them bubble up, and counted them as they moved down to the ocean.”

Adams, Roberts and other family members had returned for the nest excavation.

Volunteers dug a smooth, shallow trench in the sand to make a path from the nest down to the ocean, a distance of about 100 feet.

The spectators leaned in close for a glimpse or to take photos with their phones as the turtles made their slow journey to the sea, their tiny flippers seeking traction and their little backsides sashaying back and forth.

The entire turtle parade took about 20 minutes.

Sea turtles laid 30 nests on Emerald Isle this season. The town on the western end of Bogue Banks is one of 21 sea turtle protection programs along the 330 miles of North Carolina’s beaches.

Endangered Species

Marsha Horner, left, and Louise Ehrenkaufer discover straggling baby turtles left behind in this nest at Emerald Isle.

Baby turtles head down a clear path to the water at Emerald Isle. The babies always draw a crowd. Photos: Teri Saylor.

Matthew Godfrey, a biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission and director of the state’s Sea Turtle Project, reports the most common nesting species is the loggerhead, but green turtles, leatherbacks and a few Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle nests have been recorded on North Carolina’s beaches this year.

“All species of sea turtles in U.S. waters are listed as threatened or endangered by the U.S. Endangered Species Act,” Godfrey stated in an email. “The nest monitoring and protection project in North Carolina are part of this recovery process with the aim of boosting numbers so they are no longer threatened or endangered.”

Sea turtles have a strong survival instinct, but few make it to adulthood. Habitat loss, pollution, climate change, boat strikes and fishing mishaps are the turtles’ greatest threats. Hatchlings are the most vulnerable.

“They are the bottom link of the food chain,” said Emerald Isle volunteer Lois Craig. “Their survival rate is not good.”

If they are able to make it to the ocean without falling prey to a bird, fox or other predator, baby turtles must swim at least 30 miles on a journey lasting several days to reach the Sargasso Sea where they live in thick grass until they grow into 3-year-old juveniles. They start reproducing when they are about 25 years old.

Reproductive females return to the general region where they were hatchlings to lay their eggs, according to Godfrey. Turtles lay an average of four nests in a season, containing around 100 eggs each, and the eggs incubate for about 50 days.

Record Number of Nests

Some beaches up and down North Carolina’s coast are seeing record numbers of nests this season.

“We have found 227 nests so far this season, and we still have a few more weeks of nesting so we might see more,” said Jon Altman, a biologist with the Cape Lookout National Seashore. “This is the second-highest number of nests on our seashore in 22 years of keeping data.”

Cape Lookout recorded 242 nests in 1999.  Officials counted 157 nests in 2010 and in 2011.

“We can’t totally explain the numbers,” Altman said. “Sea turtles are still mysterious to us. It takes them 30 years to reach maturity and some females don’t nest every year.”

Experts speculate the rise in numbers is due to the recent mild winters.

Altman thinks another factor may be new regulations that require shrimp boats to install turtle excluder devices on their nets to keep the creatures from getting entangled.

“In theory, if more turtles are surviving the shrimpers, we should have more turtles, but it will take more time to determine that,” he said.

Ranger Renee Tomczik excavates a nest that didn’t hatch on Bear Island in Hammocks Beach State Park. Photo: Teri Saylor.

Along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the turtle population sharply increased this year. Wildlife biologist Britta Muiznieks acknowledged it is hard to pinpoint why turtles laid 222 nests this season, compared to 147 in 2011 and 153 in 2010.

“2004 was a poor year, with just 43 nests, total, but since then, the numbers have steadily increased,” she said. “We have seen a drastic improvement, but it is really hard to say why.”

She noted fewer turtle strandings this year too.

Renee Tomczik, a park ranger at Hammocks Beach State Park, headed out on a bright Sunday morning to excavate nests on the park’s Bear Island with Bobbie and Duane Jastremski.

“Our summer interns patrol the beach looking for mama turtles or their crawl marks. You can’t miss them. They look like big tractor tracks where their flippers dig deep into the sand,” Tomczik said.

Bear Island had 25 nests this season compared to 37 nests in 2011 and 19 in 2010.

Bear Island Turtles

A Bear Island nest targeted for excavation was easy to spot.  A shallow hole punctuated a marker that had been placed when the nest was discovered earlier in the summer.

High tides and heavy winds had added nearly a foot of sand to a nest that should have been no more than 24 inches deep. Tomczik lay face down on the beach and reached in as far as she could to pull empty shells out. Bobbie Jastremski counted.  The team retrieved 90 empty shells, one egg that did not hatch and a dead hatchling.

Another excavation on the island yielded 106 eggs that never hatched. Tomszik blamed higher than usual tides that packed the sand and created unfavorable conditions.

“Overall in North Carolina the emergence success of all nests is around 65 percent,” Godfrey said. “In years with intense hurricane and storm activity, it can be lower, and in calm years, it can be higher.”

A baby turtle makes it to the surf at Emerald Isle. Photos: Teri Saylor.

Terry Meyer, who directs the Topsail Island Sea Turtle Nesting Program, said this year appears to have been a good one for North Carolina, but just average for her area.

“It was not a banner year for us,” she said. “Over the past couple of years, we have had more than 100 nests. This year we had 82.”

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission started keeping records in 1997, according to Godfrey, and has posted statistics from 25 nesting areas its Web site. While those records are incomplete before 2010, the numbers indicate a slight uptick statewide over the last three years, with 883 nests recorded in 2010, 967 nests in 2011 and 1,087 in 2012.

“Time to maturity (for sea turtles) is around 40 years, and we wouldn’t expect to see our impact on nest protection in the nesting population for several decades,” Godfrey said. “Bottom line, it is too early to tell if the nest protection efforts are helping.”

Jenny Adams, the vacationer who helped count the Emerald Isle hatchlings was excited about her role in helping the babies complete their journey to the sea. “I felt like I was sending my kids off to college,” she said. “This was not on my bucket list before, but I just put it there and crossed it off.”

As the sun set at Emerald Isle, it started raining, and the crowd dispersed. The volunteers covered the nest, burying the egg shells and they took down the barriers. Their job was done.

As they walked away, they left no sign that anything exciting had happened on this spot. But if you looked closely at the sand where the tide was beginning to come in, you could still make out tiny faint turtle tracks disappearing into the sea foam.

Kyla Brick demonstrates a proper technique of howling for a wolf. Photo: Teri Saylor.

MANNS HARBOR — The caravan of vehicles slowly snakes along, traveling five miles down a dusty gravel road to way down yonder in the woods.

Pickup trucks, sports cars, SUVs, station wagons and a Tioga RV camper with three bicycles strapped to its bumper carry mostly Outer Banks vacationers on a twilight excursion to hear red wolves howl in the Alligator River Wildlife Refuge in Dare County.

The Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1984 to protect and preserve unique wetland habitat and associated wildlife species, including the red wolf.

The refuge, off U.S. 64, is part of the Southeastern Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Open to the public year round, the refuge covers 54,000 acres on the mainland portions of Dare and Hyde counties.

During the summer, the staff offers guided tours, giving adventurous visitors an up close look at resident bears and other wildlife and a chance to hear red wolves howl at sunset.

On a recent humid Wednesday night in mid-July, 50 nature lovers are gathered for the regular Wednesday night wolf howling.  They have traveled to this spot from Austin, Texas; Danbury Conn.; Raleigh; New Bern; and other places.

Richard Peterson and his family were on the way home to New Bern from their Outer Banks vacation and noticed a gathering of cars and people at the refuge entrance about 20 miles outside of Manteo.

Haley Whitley, left, wears a red wolf pelt and her sister Sophia models a coyote. Photo: Teri Saylor.

Christine Whitley shows her son Tyler a red wolf skull. Photo: Teri Saylor.

Despite the kids’ pleas to keep heading home, Peterson decided to pull over to see what the fuss was about. A few minutes later, his recreation vehicle, fully packed and loaded, was making its way past canals, fields and woods on a tour to look for bears.

Peterson’s daughter Elizabeth is excited. “We saw five bears and some cubs,” she said. “We saw them out in a field, and one of them stood up.”

After seeing bears, the kids gave up their quest to hurry home and decided to stick around to hear the red wolves howl.

Kyla Brick, a rising senior studying wildlife science at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, is interning as a red wolf caretaker at the Alligator River refuge this summer.

She arrives at the park entrance a half hour before the red wolf howling event and sets up her display. She drops her truck’s tailgate and positions a framed photo of a red wolf, a couple of pelts and skulls, a trap and a tracking collar.

As visitors begin to gather, Brick starts her program, tailoring her remarks to nearly two dozen kids and teenagers in the audience.

“Red wolves once roamed the Southeast, but by the 1980s, most of them had been wiped out through eradication, loss of habitat and interbreeding with coyotes,” she said.

By 1980, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had declared red wolves extinct in the wild, although captive breeding programs had been in place for nearly a decade, according to information on the Fish and Wildlife Service website.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began an aggressive attempt to reintroduce the purebred red wolf into the wild, here at the Alligator River Wildlife Refuge,” Brick said.

In 1987, The Red Wolf Recovery Program placed its first group of red wolves into the wilds of the Alligator River refuge, and a year later, the first litter of red wolf pups was born in the wild.

Captive breeding is still in place, and in a secluded area on the refuge, two pairs of adult wolves and four other females live and breed. After giving birth, their pups are introduced to free roaming wolves and grow up in the wild.

Brick estimates 75-100 wild red wolves live and roam over a five county area in northeastern North Carolina and Virginia.

The howling events attract hundreds of visitors.

Kyla Brick explains the red wolf program to visitors. Photo: Teri Saylor.

“Wolves howl for a number of reasons, but they primarily do it to communicate,” Brick said.

Sophia and Haley Whitley, sisters visiting from Raleigh, have traveled from Ocracoke Island with their parents and little brother to hear the wolves howl.

Sophia loves wolves and points to a picture of one printed on her tee shirt. “I think they are graceful and very cool,” she said.

“We took Haley to a wolf howling when she was four,” said her mom, Christine Whitley. “She’s 10 now, and we wanted to bring her back so she’d remember it.”

Maria and Tom Smith are local residents who live nearby in Southern Shores. They are at the howling with their daughter, Jenn, a photographer who is visiting from Danbury, Conn.

“I have always loved wolves. I had a mini-obsession with them when I was a teenager,” she said. “I love all animals, but wolves are the most misunderstood.”

As daylight fades, it is time to visit the wolves. Up the road, a black bear lumbers out of a field and heads toward the forest area.

Vehicles line up and slowly make their way deep into the refuge.

Tree frogs, bull frogs, crickets, cicadas and other critters sing their night songs loud enough to raise the dead on an otherwise silent night.

Dragon flies as big as sparrows dive bomb the parade of cars making their way past woods and fields, and past a sign that says “no vehicles beyond this point,” until they finally stop next to a path that leads into darkness.

Brick and two other guides have instructed this group of explorers to turn off their phones and to avoid slamming car doors so the wolves in their breeding pens won’t be alarmed.

Everyone lowers their voices to whispers for good measure.

The guides walk into the woods until their shapes melt into the shadows.

Then it starts.

First the sound of humans howling hangs in the air as the guides call out to the wolves.

The wolves respond in a chorus of high pitched soprano voices harmonizing with an odd baritone.  They yip. They yap. They moan and howl for a couple of minutes before the woods fall silent again.

Now it is the visitors’ turn to howl.  Brick gives a quick lesson, counts to three, and the entire crowd stands with their heads thrown back. Hands cupping their mouths, they howl into the black, moonless night.

They are met with silence. They try a few more times, but the wolves are done.

The thrilled adventurers return to their vehicles to begin the slow journey back to civilization.

A youthful voice breaks the silence in the darkness.

“That was so cool. It was like a symphony.”

Related Story

• Red Wolf advocates on edge as night hunting of coyotes is set to begin Aug. 1.

The group howls in the direction of the wolves, hoping they will howl back. Photo: Teri Saylor.

The intrepid kayakers pose for a group shot on Jones Island. Photo: Teri Saylor.

SWANSBORO – It was one of those beautiful late spring afternoons on the White Oak River, one of those rare days with perfectly warm air, pleasantly cool water and cotton ball clouds floating in a Carolina blue sky. Twenty coastal adventurers set out on a triathlon.

But not the Ironman kind.

It was the kind of triathlon meant for sightseeing, being outside and taking in the best of what nature has to offer.

This relaxathon called for kayaking, yoga and swimming.

Sally Steele, the N.C. Coastal Federation’s development director, discovered yoga two years ago, and just like most people who fall in love, she wanted to share it with others.

So she partnered with April Clark, owner of Second Wind Eco Tours of Swansboro, to develop a triple-sport adventure that would combine exercise with meditation and relaxation, and take it outside.

Steele and Clark took their program all the way to Jones Island, by way of the White Oak River.

“We love showing people the island,” Steele said. “We leave from the Cedar Point Wildlife Landing and paddle over to Jones Island. Along the way we pass by our oyster restoration projects, and during the trip, we are able to give the paddlers an introduction to the island. This fulfills our mission, and it is fun for the participants.”

Brad Fischer, yoga instructor and safety guide with Second Wind Eco Tours, gives beginners some paddling tips. Photo: Teri Saylor.

There was nothing about June 16 that could have prepared anyone for temperatures over the century mark that would descend like a warm damp rag in July.  There would be no hot yoga on this day.

A stiff breeze made paddling a challenge and blew in ash and smoke from the Croatan Forest fire that had just begun to get out of control, but that same breeze also kept bugs away.

The crew gathered at the Cedar Point Wildlife Landing in the Croatan for paddling tips and instructions before setting off on the half-hour trip to Jones Island.

There’s something primitive and organic crossing water under your own power, pushing and pulling on a paddle as you make your way to a destination.

And like a troupe of wayward explorers, this band of mostly beginners made their way over without tipping over or going off course.

“I love, love, love kayaking,” said Jean Zier, who recently drove to North Carolina’s coast all the way from Orange County, Calif., where she had worked in a high-stress aerospace industry job.  Her husband, a manager at Lowe’s Hardware, had moved to Carteret County first, and her brother had retired from the Marines here.

This was her first N.C. Coastal Federation trip.

“This is great. It’s a fun way to meet new people, and my husband is jealous that I’m off playing and doing this today,” she said.

Maria Tart had a good time too.

Tart is a new federation board member and is in a learning mode. So far she has volunteered at numerous federation activities, including the annual native plant festival and a school rain garden.

This was her first kayak experience, but she vows it won’t be her last.

“I love it,” she said. “Being this close to the water, in a group setting, but solitary in my own kayak is great.”

As the kayaks scraped ashore on Jones Island, participants clambered out of their vessels and walked around the island working the kinks out of their legs.

The travelers surveyed the landscape.

A small school of bottlenose dolphin diving and bobbing down the river drew smiles and laughter.

The cameras came out.

Alice Day was delighted.  She had never seen a live porpoise before.

Day had traveled to Emerald Isle from Idaho last year to help her daughter, Cassie Stephens, take care of a new born baby and never went back.

Cheryl LeClair, center, treats kayakers to a yoga session on Jones Island.

Kayakers practice yoga in the fresh air on Jones Island. Photos: Teri Saylor.

“The porpoises are really cool,” she said. “I’d like to kayak next to them.”

Day allowed that there is kayaking in Idaho, but it is different.

“Out there, we kayak on scary rivers and white water. This kayaking is new,” she said.

The 20-acre Jones Island is part of Hammock’s Beach State Park and serves as the site of many federation restoration and education projects.

In 2005, the federation bought nearly seven acres of the island. The Audubon Society already owned 10 acres. Both organizations turned their acreage over to the state park, where it is preserved, protected and available for visitors to enjoy.

It makes a beautiful setting for yoga.

“A lot of people look at yoga as a way to feed their body, mind and spirit, but our environment is part of it too,” said yoga instructor Cheryl LeClair.

LeClair wanted to feed her own spirit when she dropped out of her network systems administration profession in Chicago and started teaching yoga.

She is a devoted kayaker too.

Her friends thought she was crazy to leave a successful career to pursue yoga and kayaking.

“When I lived in Chicago, I commuted four hours a day for work,” she said. “Here, I live two miles from Second Wind. In my old job, I worked eight hours a day and was exhausted all the time. Here I can work for 11 hours and still not feel tired.”

By the time LeClair and the islanders had worked their way through a series of basic yoga poses under a canopy of live oak branches and Spanish moss, they were serene.

“Let’s thank ourselves for giving ourselves this time to relax and enjoy this day,” LeClair said in her soft, measured, yoga voice.

Relaxed and mellow, the group posed for photos before shoving off to a beachy spot on Jones Island for a swim.

In the water, Dan Sforza and Kelsie Engelhard were gathered around Erin Harrison. Engelhard had her camera out, photographing the tiny, wriggling crab Harrison was clutching between her thumb and forefinger.

The three are students at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, working on earning a master’s degree in environmental science.

Harrison had found out about the trip through an email and told her friends about it.

“I thought ‘oh my gosh, we have to go do this,’” said Engelhard. “We’re having a great time. It is relaxing and beautiful.”

Harrison, who has taken classes in environmental education, sees the value in eco excursions.

“This is a great opportunity to teach people how to conserve and build an appreciation for the environment,” she said.

And suddenly it was time to paddle back to the landing.

The wind had shifted, and as it cut across the water making ripples and tiny white caps, the enthusiastic paddlers quickly made their way home.

Odds are good they’ll be back soon.

The next kayak and yoga trip is planned for Thursday, Aug. 2. See the federation’s Events Calendar for registration information.

The federation’s three educators like to take kids outside, get them dirty and teach them about the state’s coastal environment

SWANSBORO — Wayne Guthrie points to a set of deer tracks on the sandy beach of Jones Island and calls out to a group of young teenagers to take a look.

But not one single kid pays attention. They are too busy grabbing up dibblers and plugs of salt marsh cordgrass for replenishing the soggy wet sand along the water.

Guthrie, owner of Outer Banks Seafood in Beaufort, gives up on the deer tracks, picks up a dibbler and joins his twin daughters, Cassandra and Nadine, who have already started digging.

This group is part of the Beaufort Middle School Envirothon Club, devoted to creating and preserving the environment at their school, in their community and beyond. On a day in  April, they are hard at work restoring the wetlands on Jones Island.

The club is tailor made for the N.C. Coastal Federation’s educational programs. Public schools up and down the coast have been coordinating with the federation for nearly a decade to help restore shorelines, build oyster reefs and contain polluted runoff with rain gardens.

Sarah Phillips, education coordinator for the central coastal region for the past eight years, loves working with the middle school students.

Wayne Guthrie helps, from left, his daughters Nadine and Cassie and their adviser Josie Boyette plant grass on Jones Island. Photo: Teri Saylor

Students from Alderman Elementary School in Wilmington create bags of oyster shells that are used to build reefs.

“The wetlands restoration program is a perfect fit for the seventh and eighth graders,” Phillips says. “The things they are learning fit into their standard curriculum as mandated by the state, and it dovetails with their testing.”

From August through May, students and teachers study and learn. Teachers are schooled in the program, lesson planning and curriculum. Students learn marshland ecology, build on-campus nurseries and learn to germinate seeds and grow cordgrass. The year culminates in a daylong field trip where they plant grasses and perform biological monitoring.

The federation also has education coordinators in Manteo on the northeast coast and in Wrightsville Beach on the southern coast. All three educators work with nearly 2,000 students each year on various coastal restoration projects — planting marsh grasses, building oyster beds and cultivating rain gardens. They visit another 3,000 kids in the classrooms each year.

“Good teachers are the key to our work,” says Sara Jean Hallas, coastal education coordinator for the northeast region. “Their willingness for our programs to take place is essential. Most of our programs fall within state curriculum guidelines, but not all teachers see that.”

Kitty Hawk Elementary school is a success story.

“We worked through the entire K-5 elementary school on our rain garden project, and it worked,” Hallas reports. “The school is on board.”

Based on the success of a school rain garden, the Kitty Hawk Elementary School PTA formed a Green Team, applied for and received grant funding to build a greenhouse.

“They are building the greenhouse now,” says Hallas.

Back on Jones Island, 22 young ecologists are hard at work, using their dibblers to dig deep holes in sand so thick and boggy, it threatens to suck the shoes right off their feet.

Working quickly, in pairs, the teenagers alternate digging holes and filling them with cordgrass plugs.

Spencer Valentine, 14, demonstrates the correct way to plant the grass plugs, close together.

“The closer, the better,” he says. “If they are close, they hold the soil together better.”

This event marks Bree Kerwin’s first time volunteering.  She is a freelance environmental science consultant who lives in nearby Pine Knoll Shores.

“The more interested the kids are, the more they want to help as adults,” Kerwin says.

And that is music to Phillips’ ears. “Habitat restoration teaches stewardship by having students get out and do the work,” she says. “Hopefully they will become stewards of the wetlands environment as adults too.”

When these middle school students get to high school, they will be able to participate in the federation’s oyster education and restoration program, alongside their own school’s environmental science and biology studies.

The federation’s educational programs also touch younger kids.

Students at First Flight Middle School in Kill Devils Hills plant marsh grasses at Jockey’s Ridge State Park.

At elementary schools up and down the coast, the federation helps youngsters design, build, plant and maintain rain gardens on their campuses to reduce pollution and flooding and to serve as living classrooms.

Outdoor classrooms are a treat for adults as well as students.

“I love doing this,” Phillips says. “It’s great teaching outside.”

Ted Wilgis has worked with the federation for over a decade, after a nine-year stint managing the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s educational programs. As coastal education coordinator in the federation’s southeast region, Wilgis focuses on oyster restoration programs in addition to other educational endeavors.

Over the years, he has helped shepherd the federation’s educational programming from a celebration of the coast’s beauty, to a multi-pronged approach that helps young people become good custodians of the environment.

“We have identified five tools to help students learn to make informed decisions and take action,” Wilgis says. “Those tools are awareness, critical thinking, problem solving and stewardship.”

Wilgis has a favorite slogan: “No child left inside.”

His mission is to encourage young people to get outside and connect with their surroundings.

First Flight students study the biology of oysters.

“Education is incredibly important. It makes it easier for kids to get involved as adults,” he says. “We’re not advocates in the classroom. We teach about coastal ecology. We don’t advocate for a specific position about the coast, but we do provide resources for students to make their own decisions.”

The Beaufort Middle School environmentalists are inspired.

Rachel Ellis, 14, loves working on Jones Island.

“Down where I live, way down in South River, I see trash on the roads,” she says. “I want to learn about helping the environment.”

After the planting is done, the marsh is a muddy landscape of sparse grass. Eventually it will fill out until it matches an area of lush growth where students planted cordgrass last year.

The students take up dip nets and a casting net and cringe as they wade waist deep into the chilly water just off the beach.  They are catching small salt water critters for identification.

Wayne Guthrie is as excited as his daughters to be there. He enjoys volunteering and helping.

“Kids should keep participating and doing things to help the environment,” he says.  “This is their future.”

SOUTHPORT — Tourists and locals spending a sunny Saturday on the Brunswick County beaches last month may have wondered what the fuss was about when they saw clusters of excited people, huddled together, pointing and gazing out to sea. Bird lovers had flocked to the coast to view the winter migration.

They came armed with powerful scopes, binoculars and cameras with long lenses. They lined boardwalks and beaches like a troupe of paparazzi gathered along the Hollywood red carpet.

Saturday, Jan. 28, dawned clear and cool, promising a beautiful day of birding near Fort Fisher State Park where a dozen birders traveled by ferry to stake out the marshes, walk the beaches, scan the rocks and stroll through a maritime forest hoping to spot the bird of a lifetime, or at least to make a good list of birds they spotted on the trip.

They were mostly satisfied, according to Steve Shultz, who led one of 31 excursions the Carolina Bird Club sponsored that weekend. The birding club is the largest in Carolinas with almost 800 members and may be one of the oldest. No one really knows, but it’s celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. It will mark the occasion at a special meeting in Raleigh in May.

Dawn is one of the best times for bird watching. What’s that they say about the early bird? Photo: Teri Saylor

Bird Club’s Annual Meeting

The coastal tours were part of the club’s winter meeting in Southport, Jan. 27-29. The meeting attracted nearly 150 birders from the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida and Virginia, Shulz said.

“We targeted about a half-dozen species we really wanted to see,” he said. “Black scoter, razorbill, seaside sparrow, sedge wren, orange-crowned warbler and a pair of great cormorants.”

The cormorants were celebrities of sorts. They had taken up winter residence on two pilings just offshore at Carolina Beach.

Dan Hudson, a retired veterinarian from Cary, had spotted one of the great cormorants back in December and was surprised to see two of them there in January. The large birds perched on their pilings, one preening and beating its wings as its companion surveyed the ocean, seemingly oblivious to a couple of surfers trying to catch a wave and a gaggle of humans on the shore peering at them through a variety of lenses.

“They sure do take care of their feathers,” Hudson said.

Members of the Carolina Bird Club gather at Carolina Beach to observe a pair of great cormorants that have taken up residence on pilings just off shore

Hudson met his two companions, Lewis Burke and Kent Bedenbaugh, through birding a couple of years ago. Burke, a law professor at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, and Bedenbaugh, a training manager for the South Carolina Technical College system, connected through an online message board for birders and discovered they were neighbors. Hudson and Burke became acquainted on a birding trip in Arizona.  In June, the three birding buddies will travel to Alaska in search of fowl they have never seen before.

Hudson has seen nearly 700 different species of birds over the years he has spent keeping a life list. Burke has viewed about 500.

For birders, the hobby is all about the lists. “You can have a world list, which is about 10,000 birds,” said Hudson.

“You can have state lists,” Bedenbaugh added. “People have county lists, and a lot of people keep year lists, so they can start over at the beginning of the year. If you start over with a new year list, it gives you a reason to look at a robin.”

Donna Sayce of Fairfield County, S.C., who has been birding for 42 years, admitted in a hushed whisper that she doesn’t keep lists. “I just like to come out and enjoy the birds,” she said.

A report on the club Web site after the meeting listed 162 different species of birds spotted over the weekend.

“That is a pretty typical report for a winter meeting,” Shultz said.

Birds Like It Cold

The weather over the weekend was a mixed bag with wind and rain on the first day, and warm sunshine on the second day. Neither day was perfect for birding, but the sunny weather was welcomed.

“Overall it wasn’t bad, but colder weather would have produced more bird activity because they tend to feed when the temperatures are cool,” Shultz said.

This trip marked the bird club’s first meeting in Southport, where the National Audubon Society’s Christmas bird counts are among the highest in the state, according to Shultz.

“The diversity of habitats, beaches, marsh and nearby long leaf pine forests create good bird diversity,” he said.             Some birders made rare harlequin duck sightings at Wrightsville Beach. Others were able to check out razorbills off their life lists after they saw a pair bobbing in the ocean not far off shore.

Steve Shultz grabs his tripod and ventures out into the marsh near Fort Fisher.

“It was not exceedingly uncommon for razorbills to be spotted here,” Shultz said. “But it was rare to have them in so close. Often you have to be out in a boat to see them.”

For Gail Youngblood of Summerville, S.C., nearly every bird was a life bird. “My husband and I have been birding for less than a year, and nearly every bird we see is new to us,” she said.  Even the seasoned birders who have logged hundreds of species and probably did not spy one single bird they have never seen before were happy to be there.

For nature lovers, it’s not always about the birds. Hudson put it into words. “Birding is about setting goals and trying to meet those goals, but probably one of the most important things is spending time with birding buddies and developing good friendships.”

And for that, the weekend was a success.