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A brightly hued eastern bluebird peeks out from a knothole in a tree at the Dare County Arboretum and Teaching Garden in Kill Devil Hills. Male bluebirds tend to draw attention to themselves at their nest cavities in this way to lure potential mates, according to Cornell Lab. Dare County Extension Master Gardener volunteers maintain the arboretum garden at 300 Mustian St. Photo: Kip Tabb

The Friends of the North Carolina Maritime Museum Beaufort is set to offer a two-week travel opportunity next year to see the birds, wildlife and natural history of Finland.

The nonprofit friends group is partnering with EcoQuest Travel for the trip, “The Birds & Mammals of Finland — Brown Bears, Wolverines and Boreal Birds,” May 16-29, 2027, with an optional six-day, post-trip extension to the Varanger Peninsula in the Norwegian Arctic.

“Finland is an extraordinary country, a throwback to an older wilder Europe,” the friends group said in a press release. “It is a land of great evergreen forests, rugged coastlines, shimmering lakes and stunning wildlife.”

The group said Finland is arguably the best country in Europe to observe brown bears and probably the best place in the world to see the enigmatic wolverine.

“We will concentrate our efforts on these two species, but we are traveling to Finland in the spring which will find us there at the best time to see owls, lekking grouse species and migrating shorebirds,” according to the release.

The tour will arrive in Finland’s capital of Helsinki and travel north to Savonlinna to search for the rare Saimaa ringed seal before heading farther north to the Koli, “our jumping off point for two very remote areas where we will use specially designed hides to look for Brown Bears and Wolverines,” according to the release. “Wolves occasionally show up at both hides and even the mysterious Eurasian Lynx sometimes makes a brief appearance. Being able to observe and photograph these iconic mammals of the north will be a rare and special privilege.”

From there, the group will travel west to Oulu and the Baltic Sea in search of owls, grouse, woodpeckers, songbirds, shorebirds and waterfowl.

Then for the final leg, it’s northeast to Kuusamo in the boreal forest to search for “specialty birds” such as the  willow ptarmigan, black grouse, capercaillie and boreal songbirds.

Those who do not depart for home head on to Arctic Norway to explore two new habitats with chances to see such iconic Arctic species as willow ptarmigan, bluethroat, Eurasian dotterel and long-tailed jaeger on the tundra; and king and Steller’s eiders, yellow-billed loon, Lapland longspur, snow bunting, gyrfalcon and huge colonies of alcids, or auks, on the Arctic Ocean.

For more information, contact JoAnne Powell at joannepowell1208@gmail.com.

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission is accepting public comments on the 2026-27 migratory game bird hunting seasons for waterfowl, webless migratory species and extended falconry.

Comments may be submitted through the WRC’s online comment portal through 5 p.m. March 4.

The commission may choose hunting season dates within guidelines established by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service each year.

The season frameworks for waterfowl and webless migratory species, extended falconry guidelines and Canada goose and duck hunting zones are available on the commission’s comment portal.

Submitted comments will be considered along with staff-recommended season dates and bag limits before the final season dates are approved. Wildlife Resources commissioners are expected to set the dates during their April 16 business meeting.

Season dates being considered include compensatory days, or those allowed for states that do not allow migratory bird hunting on Sunday, for waterfowl and webless migratory species.

In other business, the the commission continues to track highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, in birds across North Carolina. New cases of this illness occur because of the large numbers of migratory waterfowl that congregate throughout the winter in the state, particularly in the Outer Banks, according to an agency release.

So far, suspected or confirmed cases of the bird flu have been reported in 25 of the state’s 100 counties during the 2025-26 sampling season. But the number of cases in wild birds are down compared to this time last year.

“Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza will continue to circulate through our bird populations, however, more birds are developing antibodies against the virus which creates a ‘herd immunity’ which means we will likely see fewer impacts to bird populations from the flu,” Miranda Turner, a Wildlife Resources Commission wildlife health biologist, stated in a release.

Birds most likely to be found with avian influenza include waterfowl, raptors and shorebirds. Cases can also occur in songbirds and wild mammal species.

To help prevent the spread, remove food sources that encourage birds to congregate in one location.

To report dead wild animals, especially five or more dead birds in one area within a week, contact the N.C. Wildlife Helpline at 866-318-2401 between 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. or anytime by email at HWI@ncwildlife.gov.

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A male pileated woodpecker, or Dryocopus pileatus, searches for a snack Sunday in the bark of a pine tree in Nags Head Woods Preserve, one of the largest remaining maritime forests on the East Coast, according to The Nature Conservancy. This woodpecker, which feeds on insects in trees and logs, is one of more than 150 bird species visitors may spot at the preserve, and at least a third nests here, according to the conservancy. Photo: Kip Tabb

Budding birders and seasoned ornithologists alike are invited to join Coastal Studies Institute educators for a guided winter birding experience at Lake Mattamuskeet.

Participants are to meet at the institute at 7 a.m. Monday. Transportation to and from Lake Mattamuskeet will be provided. The group is expected to return to the institute around noon. Registration for the program is required and can be done online. Cost to attend is $25 per person.

“This field-based program will introduce participants to the remarkable diversity of ducks, swans, geese, and other wetland birds that gather here each winter,” organizers said about Lake Mattamuskeet, calling the geographical feature “one of North Carolina’s premier waterfowl habitats and a critical stopover along the Atlantic Flyway.”

Participants are welcome and encouraged to bring personal cameras, binoculars, spotting scopes, and guidebooks. Appropriate attire for extended time outdoors is also encouraged.

“Expect plenty of time in the field with scopes and binoculars, great photo opportunities, and an engaging, place-based learning experience in one of the state’s most iconic wildlife refuges,” organizers added.

The Coastal Studies Institute on East Carolina University’s Outer Banks Campus in Wanchese is a multi-institutional research and educational partnership of the state’s university system and also includes N.C. State University, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, UNC Wilmington, and Elizabeth City State University.

Contact John McCord at mccordr@ecu.edu or 252-475-5450 with questions.

The Army Corps of Engineers wants more time to mull over concerns that have been brought up on the proposed project to deepen and widen portions of the Wilmington Harbor channel.

The North Carolina Division of Coastal Management announced late Tuesday afternoon it had granted the Corps’ request, indefinitely pausing the division’s review of whether the proposed project is consistent with state coastal management program laws, regulations and policies.

“The decision to pause allows time for the Corps to review and consider issues raised by DCM and the public before DCM completes its review,” according to a release. “A timeline has not been established for when the pause may be lifted.”

The pause follows a series of deadline extensions that have been made in recent weeks on the proposed project, one that is being highly scrutinized for its potential effects to the environment, shorelines and treasure of historic and culturally significant areas along the shores of the lower Cape Fear River.

The N.C. State Ports Authority says the project designed to accommodate larger ships would attract more import and export business to the port, ease shipping congestion on the East Coast, and keep the state’s ports competitive. The proposal calls for deepening the harbor channel by 5 feet and widening portions of it from the mouth of the Cape Fear River to the Wilmington port.

In late December, the division announced that the Corps’ Wilmington District was giving the division more time to complete its review of the federal determination, pushing its deadline from Jan. 5 to Jan. 19.

The Corps requested the pause on Jan. 16, just days after state fisheries and wildlife resources officials sent the division memorandums saying those agencies continue to have concerns about impacts to fish and wildlife resources within the proposed project area.

A Corps spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment by deadline for this report.

In its Jan. 14 memorandum to the Division of Coastal Management, the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries reiterated its concerns about the proposed project’s effects on habitat essential to fish in the river, wetlands connected to the river, and the overall water quality in the river.

Deepening and widening the harbor as planned “will have significant adverse impacts to fisheries resources due to the permanent loss of state-designated nursery and anadromous fish spawning areas along the Cape Fear River estuary and its tributaries,” the memorandum states.

“There is also potential for significant adverse impacts to wetlands, (submerged aquatic vegetation), shellfish resources, and water column habitat due to insufficient mitigation plans and uncertain impacts associated with the proposed actions that are not adequately discussed,” in the federal letter report and draft environmental impact statement of the Wilmington Harbor 403 navigation project released in September. The figure 403 refers to the relevant section of the Water Resources Development Act.

N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission officials raised similar worries, stating in a Jan. 15 memorandum to DCM that while it had been involved throughout the project’s development process, “our agency still has concerns regarding impacts the proposal will have on wildlife resources in the project area.”

“These comments include concerns regarding the proposal’s direct impacts to wildlife habitats, whether impacts to these habitats have been adequately assessed, inadequacies of mitigation proposals, the need to consult appropriate agencies prior to moving forward with the proposal, and the subsequent impacts to wildlife and their habitats (particularly nesting waterbirds and shorelines) from larger and increased vessel use.”

A number of towns in Brunswick and New Hanover counties have adopted resolutions urging state and federal agencies to protect a series of islands within the lower Cape Fear River that support 30% of the state’s coastal shorebird population.

Those towns are also calling for the creation of a comprehensive, long-term, and fully funded environmental and adaptive management plan to cover costs related to monitoring and mitigation to prevent and repair environmental harm.

A Corps official earlier this month confirmed to Coastal Review that the agency was implementing a programmatic agreement with the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office, the General Services Administration, the state Ports Authority, “and possibly the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation” to review historic and culturally significant areas along the river that may be impacted by the proposed project.

The agreement must be signed before the agency finalizes project plans, which would occur after the Corps releases its final environmental impact statement.

The final environmental impact statement is expected to be released sometime this summer, according to a tentative timeline released by the Corps. It is unclear how the Corps’ request of the state to pause its review may affect that projected timeline.

Once the review process resumes, DCM must decide whether to concur with or object the Corps’ determination.

“If DCM objects, it can offer alternatives or conditions that, if agreed to by the Corps, would allow the project to proceed,” according to the division.

Construction on the proposed project would begin no earlier than 2030 and take about six years to complete, a schedule Corps officials have said is optimistic.

Editor’s Note: Tabb’s Trails is a commentary photo-essay series with coastal reporter, photographer and hiking enthusiast Kip Tabb.

Manteo Marshes on Roanoke Island is a confounding, confusing place to visit, not because it’s hard to find — although blink and the parking lot off the road to Wanchese is missed — but because there’s no telling what will be there on any given day.

It’s about a milelong, notably easy hike around the impoundment. Some days there’s mallards busily feeding on the submerged grasses and lesser yellowlegs wading in the shallows making quick jabs into the water.

And then there are days where you feel lucky to see a northern mockingbird, numerous year-round at Manteo Marshes. But it’s worth the trip because, on those lucky days, it can be spectacular.

In the winter, lesser yellowlegs are often numerous in the mudflats. Get too close to that occasional mallard, and the drake will make it clear he feels threatened. In the copse on the north end of the impoundment, there is a constant twitter of birds – mostly yellow-rumped warblers in the winter, although northern mockingbirds make a good showing as well.

It is buggy in the summer, so put on some insect repellant and check it out. Osprey are constantly flying by, the northern mockingbirds are still there and lots of robins and heron are visitors as well.

But, be patient and pay attention. The birds are there, and an occasional squirrel.

The total project area is 1,874 acres. Except for the impoundment trail, the area is impenetrable marsh.

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A siege of herons takes refuge Monday from high winds near Russell Creek in Beaufort. Photo: Dylan Ray

Organizers invite anyone who has participated before in the annual Christmas Bird counts on Ocracoke or Portsmouth Island, or those who have expressed interest, or might know others who’d like to join, to sign up as soon as possible.

The count dates this year will be Dec. 30 on Ocracoke Island and Dec. 31 on Portsmouth Island.

RSVPs are needed to inform Capt. Donald Austin know how many people will be heading from Ocracoke to Portsmouth.

The Ocracoke count has run every year since it began in 1982.

The Portsmouth count started in 1988 and has missed a few years due to bad weather or scheduling problems.

“With all the dismal reports on birds declining, we did get a bounce from last year’s Ocracoke’s count,” said compiler Peter Vankevich.

Ocracoke’s 2024 Christmas Bird Count tied the record for the number of species.

To volunteer, call or text Vankevich at 202 468-2871, or email petevankevich@gmail.com.

The tally rally will begin at 6 pm, Dec. 31, at Vankevich’s house in Widgeon Woods, near the lighthouse on Ocracoke Island.

To get a sense of just how severe Battery Island’s shoreline is changing, look no farther than its trees.

As waves lick away at the fringes of this little island in the middle of the Cape Fear River near Southport, trees rising off its shores are toppling.

“The mature trees that the birds nest in are being lost along the shore,” said Lindsay Addison, coastal biologist with Audubon North Carolina.

Each tree that plops into the river is one fewer on an island that is globally significant for nesting white ibis and home to one of the largest wading bird colonies in North Carolina.

To Battery Island’s east rests Shellbed Island, a large marsh system edged by elevated banks of old oyster shells called shell rakes.

In good condition, these rakes do not flood at high tide or during storms, making them a crucial and rather niche nesting habitat for American oystercatchers.

“The Cape Fear River supports almost 30% of the state’s nesting American oystercatchers. And about half of the American oystercatchers that nest on the Cape Fear River nest in these types of habitats. So, it’s a very important habitat type for American oystercatchers and they are a state listed species,” Addison said.

Like Battery Island, waves have altered Shellbed Island’s edges, where the elevated shell rakes have been flattened out and pushed back into the marsh by coastal storms.

In an effort to protect the threatened bird habitat on these islands, Audubon and its partners, Sandbar Oyster Co. and the North Carolina Coastal Federation, have teamed up to design and install two pilot living shoreline projects and test their effectiveness at protecting the low-lying islands on the river.

The Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, is contributing $13,800 in cost share for the $51,500 projects. Of the Coastal Federation’s contribution, $5,250 has been set aside for Battery Island and $8,550 for the project at Shellbed Island.

Georgia Busch, a coastal specialist in the Coastal Federation’s Wrightsville Beach office, said these projects, “align with our mission for preservation of critical habitats in our coastal and estuary systems.”

“But, particularly in the lower Cape Fear River, there’s a need for some extra reinforcement of those habitats there. Historically, the birds have used this area for a long, long time and we just want to make sure that stays intact. These sites were chosen for both their exposure and their critical points in the river,” she said.

Battery Island’s shores have for years been battered by waves from large vessels that navigate the river to and from the Port of Wilmington, recreational boats that skim the waters around Southport, and the Bald Head Island ferry.

“What makes Battery Island special for the nesting birds is it’s relatively small, it’s far enough away from the mainland that it doesn’t have any mammalian predators on it, and so that allows this colony to have a lot of success,” Addison said.

There’s also little human disturbance on the island. The island, which is managed by Audubon, is closed to people March 1 to Sept. 15 each year.

A test section of about 70 linear feet of living shoreline will be installed along the roughly 100-acre island’s southwest corner, which has experienced some of the most severe erosion.

A reef constructed of Sandbar Oyster Co.’s Oyster Catcher reef building substrates, which are made with plant-fiber cloth, infused with different cement mixtures, and molded into different shapes to promote sediment accumulation and marsh growth.

The test project at Shellbed Island has been designed to prevent shell rakes from washing away.

Power hurricanes, including Florence in 2018 and Dorian in 2019, pushed the shell rakes back into the marsh and flattened them out. And the oyster reefs that at one time provided an abundance of oyster shell in the river are not as plentiful because of overfishing, pollution and habitat degradation.

“There’s still plenty of spat, larval oysters, in the water, but there isn’t a lot of substrate for them to settle on because oysters typically grow on other oysters,” Addison explained. “When you put in a living shoreline-type of material, or almost any hard substrate, you’ll get oysters recruiting onto it. What we would like to do is to help jumpstart some oyster populations in areas of these shell rakes.”

The project at Shellbed Island includes installing roughly 67 feet of living shoreline in front of the shell rakes and material behind the shell rakes, “so that when nature moves those loose shells around, it can build back up into a more sustainable nesting habitat where the oystercatchers are not losing so many of their nests to overwash,” Addison said.

Audubon has a received a grant for a separate project to place loose oyster shell directly on the existing rakes.

Busch explained the test projects are a first-of-their kind because they will be at isolated islands “where we’re really only looking at habitat and this will be really helpful for testing out the strength and feasibility of the Sandbar Oyster Company’s products and of living shorelines.”

“These sites were chosen for both their exposure and their critical points in the river,” she said. “We want to see how this product will work somewhere where we get a lot of wave energy. We’re going to find out.”

Addison said she has “high hopes” for the living shorelines in curbing erosion at the islands.

“If it turns out to look like it’s working well then we could seek larger pots of money and expand our permit to be able to do this at a larger scale,” she said.

Audubon is continuing to fundraise for the projects. Donations may be made by contacting Addison by email at lindsay.addison@audubon.org.

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A gull keeps watch from atop the North Carolina Department of Transportation Ferry Division’s vehicle ferry Kinnakeet as it plies the Neuse River between Minnesott Beach and Cherry Branch. Photo: Mark Hibbs

Snapped an image of the North Carolina coast worth sharing? Submit your photo.

COROLLA — There’s a pond at the Donal C. O’Brien, Jr. Sanctuary and Audubon Center, the Pine Island Club, just to the west of the clubhouse, with a troubled past.

Sometime in the 1940s, when the Pine Island Club was a hunting club, the membership dug out an existing pond, put in what was perhaps a 3 inches in diameter pipe to carry water from a canal off Currituck Sound and then bulkheaded the shore.

“They bulkheaded it so that they could have ducks in there all the time, so they could breed them,” said Audubon Center Senior Coordinator of Habitats and Facilities Sara Marschhauser.

The pond though, after more than 75 years, was no longer an inviting habitat for ducks, geese, or any of the species of birds, turtles or mammals that are part of the sanctuary habitat, longtime Sanctuary Director Robbie Fearn recently told the Coastal Review.

“The number of birds that I saw in it each winter went down as that pond was no longer serving the needs of wildlife,” he said.

Over the years, the water level had been falling, and “the water level was 2 feet below the bulkhead, so there was no soft side for turtles and smaller ducks. We saw little goslings (that) got stuck in there last year,” Marschhauser said. “We had to put something in there to get them out.”

That has since changed. As part of a $309,000 grant from the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, the pond, Marschhauser said, has been “restored back to its previous footprint.”

With the pond restored, wildlife came back almost immediately.

“Pretty quickly we had two wood ducks come out from the back side of the marsh and just hang out on the edge for a couple weeks,” Marschhauser said.

She mentioned that she had seen shorebirds, in this case a tri-colored heron, spotted sandpiper and great egret, standing side by side feeding.

“That means then there must have been a lot of food there. They don’t cooperate unless there’s food,” Marschhauser said.

Restoring the pond required considerably more than merely removing the bulkhead, smoothing the sides and digging out the bottom where silt had filled it.

The original pipes were much too small to provide enough water to maintain the pond’s depth, and, over the years, Fearn noted, “as sediment filled into the bottom of that pipe it got more and more restricted.”

The new pipe is significantly wider and will be much easier to maintain so that silt doesn’t restrict water flow. That extra volume of water can already be seen as it allows fish more access the pond.

“We’ve already seen increase in fish reproducing in this pond,” Marschhauser said.

What was clear from the outset of the project, however, was that simply bringing the pond back to its original shape and size and laying in a larger pipe would not be enough to maintain sufficient water levels.

The road from the clubhouse to the Currituck Sound dock passes through an open vista of marsh, trees and grasses. Songbirds are in constant motion. The dock itself is a haven for shorebirds and an occasional nutria.

About 25 or 30 yards from the dock, the canal that feeds the pond passes under the road. At one, the crossing was little more than a causeway over a ditch. “There were two little pipes … and that was it. You weren’t really getting much flow at all,” Marschhauser said.

To correct that, a low bridge now crosses the canal that is more open, allowing water to flow freely, “so that there’s not even a pipe that it has to go through,” she said.

An added bonus, Marschhauser continued, is that in high-water events, which results from any sustained wind from the west, “hopefully our bridge won’t flood.”

With a sustained flow of water, Marschhauser said she was confident the habitat will return to its original diversity.

“The hydrology is what’s going to bring in all the critters now,” she said.

Fearn agreed, noting how much more diverse the wildlife using the restored pond will be.

“By changing it back to a to a natural-edge pond where not just like diving ducks could use it, but (also) wading birds and bobcats and the otter, it becomes a buffet for everybody, rather than a small buffet for a limited number of species,” he said.

The North Carolina Land and Water Fund grant the Donal C. O’Brien, Jr. Audubon Center has received is the second substantial grant awarded to the center in the past two years. Last year a $3.05 million National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant “to fund innovative marsh restoration pilot projects” was begun with a number of those pilot projects ongoing.

At least one of the projects, Fearn said, “a thin layer sediment, putting silt and sand on top of the (marsh) islands, is cutting-edge for the state of North Carolina. So the process of working through it with regulators … is taking a little longer to get that permit.”

Other shoreline-stabilization projects have been completed and are being evaluated.

Fearn attributed Pine Island’s success in scoring major grants to simply listening.

“We’re listening to the landscape, and we’re listening to what the community needs, and then we understand the grants that we’re applying for and make sure they fit well,” he said.

Editor’s Note: Tabb’s Trails is a commentary photo-essay series with coastal reporter, photographer and hiking enthusiast Kip Tabb.

Driving along N.C. 12 Saturday, Oct. 18, it becomes quickly obvious that a nor’easter recently blew across the Outer Banks.

Traffic has stopped twice in the 4.5 miles to clear the road of sand and ocean overwash between the south end of the Basnight Bridge and the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center, where a birding trip was scheduled as part of the 2025 Wings Over Water Wildlife Festival held Oct. 14-19. The trip, along with several others on federally managed lands, were canceled or modified because of the government shutdown that began Oct. 1 and continued at the time of this publication.

North Carolina Department of Transportation crews are hard at work, rebuilding the sand dune, but the evidence of the storms that had battered coastal North Carolina cannot be missed.

Standing water from overwash still covers the road in places. Sand on the roadway forces drivers to slow down even when there is no stoplight controlling traffic. Some dunes show clear signs of the waves that ran over them, their sand a darker color and more compact that dunes to the north and south.

Yet nature will abide, and at the visitor center, the North Pond is filled with images that no camera can truly capture. A flock of 200 or 300 northern pintail 150 or 200 yards long seems to be paddling effortlessly from the south to the north.

There are songbirds in the trees and foliage, and a yellow-rumped warbler darts by, too quick for the camera to focus. It’s a bird that is almost never seen in the summer in northeastern North Carolina but it is ubiquitous in the fall and winter.

As it turns out, it was a remarkable day on the half-mile North Pond Wildlife Trail that begins behind the visitor center, with rarely seen species making an appearance and migratory waterfowl filling the waters of the pond with color and sound.

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Danielle Carey of Holly Ridge recently submitted this image of various shorebirds congregating on a sand bank in the Sneads Ferry area as if time for a shift change. “This was my first time taking this lens out on the water, and I felt like it was the one day I wasn’t seeing any birds out” Carey told us in her submission. “On our way back, I spotted this little sandbar with a whole variety of birds. I was so excited, and although I aim to capture birds in flight, I loved that I was able to capture a moment where one was taking off, and another was landing at the same time.”

Snapped an image of the North Carolina coast worth sharing? Submit your photo.

RALEIGH — A federal court decision issued Wednesday blocks the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from using a potentially harmful algaecide at Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge, a compound that environmental groups argued would endanger the waterfowl the refuge is supposed to protect.

Refuge officials had issued a notification in 2023 that it planned to do a trial application of chemical pellets within the next two years to test their effects on persistent blooms of blue-green algae on the 40,000-acre Lake Mattamuskeet, the state’s largest natural freshwater lake.

But environmental groups were concerned that the product, according to its label, could be toxic to birds. 

In response, the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill, on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club, filed a lawsuit, asking for a preliminary injunction to stop the refuge’s plan. The agency agreed during a subsequent court hearing to suspend its plan until April 2025, and a final hearing was held in May.

Wednesday’s order by U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle for the Eastern District of North Carolina Eastern Division can be appealed within 60 days,  Ramona McGee, senior attorney and leader of the Wildlife Program at the Law Center, told Coastal Review Wednesday.

“The Service is currently evaluating the court’s order,” a U.S. Department of Interior spokesperson said in an email sent Wednesday afternoon, responding to a request from Coastal Review for comment on the decision.

The email also addressed a question about the number of staff at the refuge.

“Lake Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge is part of the Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuges Complex, which includes refuges from Cedar Island to Currituck. As such, Lake Mattamuskeet’s management is through a complex approach — with staff throughout the complex assisting and leading activities.”

As McGee explained, the Southern Environmental Law Center argued successfully that the Fish and Wildlife Service had violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to evaluate and disclose the potential impacts of the algaecide.

“This experiment was merely a distraction,” McGee said in an interview. “It was never designed to address those root causes of the lake’s water quality problems. Instead, this was a project that was explicitly experimental and alarmingly, was using a product that can kill and harm birds.”

The refuge had proposed to use Lake Guard Oxy, a sodium percarbonate-based algaecide used by Pittsburgh-based contractor BlueGreen Water Technologies, on about 600 acres of several isolated areas around the perimeter of Lake Mattamuskeet.

In recent years, the lake has been plagued during warm months with algal blooms that have become populated with cyanobacteria, which can be harmful to people and animals.

The proposed treatment, according to the agency, was intended to reduce the toxic algae enough to allow the beneficial phytoplankton to be reestablished. In the process, the refuge said, it could help restore water clarity in the lake.

In 2001, the North Carolina General Assembly provided $5 million toward the pilot study.

Refuge officials also said that, once dissolved, the pellets were safe for birds. Steps would be taken, the officials added, to prevent their exposure to undissolved pellets.

But rather than a singular problem, the algae is a symptom of an unhealthy ecosystem in the lake that has excessive nutrient levels and near complete loss of submerged aquatic vegetation, the environmental groups said.

Situated in the center of rural mainland Hyde County, the lake, which is 6 miles wide, 18 miles long and an average of 2 feet deep, has suffered severe water quality degradation over recent decades. The refuge totals about 50,000 acres and still attracts thousands of wintering tundra swan and other migratory waterbirds, as well as numerous species of resident duck.

In 2016, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources listed the lake as having impaired waters, based on high alkalinity and levels of chlorophyll-a, both indicators for cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms that produce cyanotoxins.

An effort led by the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, created a collective and holistic approach to restoring the lake, with the Lake Mattamuskeet Watershed Restoration Plan being released in 2018. In the years since, the strategies in plan, which include drainage improvements and restoration of the submerged grasses, have been implemented as time, funding and staffing have allowed.  

“We hope that the Fish and Wildlife Service refocuses on the long-term solutions that will address the root causes of Lake Mattamuskeet’s water quality problems” McGee said.

Considering anecdotal reports about staff cuts at wildlife refuges — none have been confirmed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — McGee said it makes the court decision even more timely in its benefit to the birds. As part of its proposal to do the pilot treatment, the refuge had promised that staff would shoo, or haze, the birds away from any undissolved pellets that could harm them. 

“I think it would have been very concerning for the Fish and Wildlife Service to proceed with a risky experiment like this when it did not have adequate staff to monitor and manage the project,” she said.

There was a time when the distinctive “kiki-do” call of eastern black rails were a common sound rising up from North Carolina marshes.

Masters of secrecy, these little birds are rarely, if ever, seen.

They prefer to skirt through the marsh using tunnels dug by rabbits and other small mammals rather than take to the sky. Their nests are typically well concealed close to the ground in the highest part of brackish, saltwater and inland freshwater marshes.

But the habitat that eastern black rails so skillfully use to maintain their privacy is under growing threat from rising ocean waters, more powerful storms, and development and, if their numbers continue to decline, projections are they’ll disappear altogether within 35 years.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission aims to help these birds, putting forth a management plan to improve the black rails’ habitat by permanently protecting coastal marshes and assisting private landowners with potential habitat creation.

That’s going to take hundreds of acres of additional inland, shallow marsh and high-elevation coastal marsh.

“We think there’s probably less than 40 breeding pairs in North Carolina right now,” said Kacy Cook, a coastal waterbird biologist with the Wildlife Resources Commission.

The commission is accepting public comment on the Black Rail Management Plan through July 11.

The eastern black rail was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2020. The commission lists it as a species of greatest conservation need.

Long gone are the days when eastern black rails were documented in freshwater marshes in the North Carolina mountains and Piedmont. No one has heard their “kiki-do” in the interior part of the state since 2005, Cook said.

Once abundant black rail habitat along the North Carolina has been crowded out by houses, roads and farmed land.

The last remaining pockets of coastal areas where the birds are heard in some places in the Outer Banks (exact locations are kept under wraps to prevent human disturbance) and Cedar Island, an unincorporated area of Carteret County. Even there, surveys reveal a dramatic population decline.

Surveys are conducted throughout the black rails’ breeding cycle by using something called a targeted call-response where biologists play a recording of the “kiki-do” sound and wait for a response from black rails in the survey area.

“You used to be able to hear 70 black rail calling from the causeway,” at Cedar Island, Cook said.

Now, fewer than 10 respond at any given time, she said.

And while that’s not good for the eastern black rail, it’s also indicative of a wider coastal problem.

“Black rails are our signal that our coastal marshes and freshwater wetlands are in trouble, and that makes a difference for a lot of species, and our own wellbeing,” Cook said.

Eastern black rails rely on very shallow water levels in marshes. They have legs that are typically just over one inch long. Their fledglings, roughly the size of cotton balls, are out of the nest within 24 hours of hatching, but they’re not able to fly until about 40 days later.

This is why coastal storm flooding, exacerbated by sea level rise, is a particular threat, because flood waters can wash away the nests, eggs and chicks. One big storm could wipe out the remaining population in North Carolina.

“Those are happening at a rate that is too high for their population to grow,” Cook said.

Lack of fire, which is crucial to maintaining that type of habitat, and agricultural practices that include cutting field borders where black rails like to settle among wet, tall, grassy habitat, are further degrading the birds’ habitat.

“I’m only finding black rails where we have high herbaceous plant diversity. They only use habitats that are very dense herbaceous cover, grasses and flowers with few shrubs and no trees,” Cook said.

The commission’s management plan for black rails includes the creation and restoration of 600 acres of freshwater marsh and 600 acres of additional high-elevation coastal march by 2056.

“What we do for black rails will benefit all of the marsh birds that we have now, including the egrets and the herons and the wood storks. So, working on restoring black rail habitat is going to benefit all of our coastal birds in some way and our seafood. Seventy-five percent of our seafood comes from coastal marshes,” Cook said.

Featured Image

Least terns are excellent fish-catchers, and when feeding their young, can deliver about two fish per hour. Males also catch and display fish during courting, which is what we assumed is going on here. There’s only one problem with that theory: After showing it to the female for a few seconds, when she finally showed interest, he flew away. Photo: William Birkemeier

As the weather and water warm, beachgoers will flock to the North Carolina coast just as many of the native shorebirds and seagoing avian residents begin to nest.

Piping plovers skittering up and down the sand with the surf, gulls loitering for picnic castoffs and tossed fish bait and pelicans soaring overhead or skimming the swells are all well-known and welcome sights for tourists to the North Carolina coast.

The annual nesting sanctuary closure window from March 1 to Sept. 15 helps both early and late-season nesters like brown pelicans and black skimmers. Least terns have already begun their courting and nesting rituals and American oystercatchers have started hatching chicks.

While almost any sandcastle builder, surfer or fisherman can expect to share the shore with these birds, almost all of them are in steep decline from habitat loss, rising sea levels, pollution and other threats, a new study led by the Audubon Society shows.

The 2025 State of the Birds Report shows sharp declines in shorebirds and other species along the Atlantic Coast, including least terns, American oystercatchers and piping plovers. In North Carolina, black skimmers have also seen a drop in documented nests, leading to their designation as a state-threatened species.

“The issues facing shorebirds are complex,” Audubon North Carolina spokesperson Brittany Salmons told Coastal Review. “The combined effects of sea level rise due to climate change and how we respond to that by choosing natural solutions versus shoreline hardening play a central role in the long-term hope for these species. Development brings more people and more alterations — like dredging, beach nourishment, terminal groins — to the habitats birds need. For shorebirds in particular this can be catastrophic. Having inlets with natural oscillation and broad flats are critical, along with water quality and prey abundance.”

If shorebirds can rise above all of that, many species also have to endure lengthy, challenging migrations from their nests on the Arctic tundra to wintering grounds in South America and places in between. The quality of each of the habitats they will encounter on their multi-thousand-mile annual odysseys is critical to their survival and ability to return to their nesting grounds to breed once more, Salmons said.

Nationally, about a third of all bird species – Audubon kept count of 229 individual species from coast to coast – are considered of high or moderate concern because of declining populations.

Of those, 42 species are listed as red-alert tipping point species, or “birds with perilously low populations and steep declining trends.” Another 37 species are considered orange-alert, populations that show long-term population losses and accelerated declines within the past decade. Thirty-three species qualify for yellow-alert status, showing long-term population losses that have stabilized in recent years yet still require conservation to sustain that tenuous recovery, Audubon said.

All of those species, regardless of their color coding, have one thing in common: They have each lost more than half of their measurable populations in the past 50 years.

“Some of these species lack sufficient monitoring to thoroughly investigate losses,” states the report. “Tipping point species require focused scientific research to pinpoint drivers of declines, paired with fast action on conservation measures to bring these birds back.”

As a group, shorebirds fared worst among the bird populations outlined in the report. Since 1980, shorebirds have suffered a 33% decline in overall population, which the report characterizes as “widespread declines with accelerating losses.”

Of 28 species of shorebirds measured, 19 showed “definitive negative population trends,” with 18 of those showing accelerated losses in recent years. Shorebirds are most heavily represented among the species listed as at a tipping point.

“Surveys show steep shorebird declines at migratory staging sites along the Atlantic Coast from North Carolina to Nova Scotia, as well as the Gulf Coast,” the report says. “Conservation actions to restore these critical coastal habitats will protect shorebirds, people and property from storms, flooding and sea level rise.”

Targeted efforts needed

Targeted conservation efforts are needed to protect shorebirds along the North Carolina coast and elsewhere along the Eastern Flyway, Audubon said. The report highlights efforts to protect the American oystercatcher, the black, white and brown shorebird notable for its thick, sturdy orange bill.

Fifteen years ago, the oystercatcher was in serious decline throughout its Atlantic Coast range. In 2009, Manomet Conservation Sciences, in partnership with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, launched the American Oystercatcher Recovery Initiative composed of state, federal and private groups across 16 states all along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The coordinated conservation effort has resulted in a 43% increase in oystercatcher populations, from about 10,000 individuals in 2009 to nearly 15,000 in 2023, according to the report.

Targeted management and monitoring along the coast, including protecting areas for oystercatcher use paid off, the report says. Remote islands and portions of public beaches were also roped off to keep the public from interfering with the birds’ natural behavior and reproduction.

“This coordinated, multi-state effort saved this iconic, orange-billed bird from irreversible loss,” Audubon Coastal Biologist Lindsay Addison said. “People visiting the coast this summer can do their part by respecting posted sanctuaries and keeping a safe distance from beach-nesting birds. We’ve already limited available habitat with development, the least we can do is share the shore.”

Seabirds – gulls and similar species that spend much of their time soaring over ocean waves – were also found to be in freefall. Audubon characterized seabird populations as suffering “cascading declines, but recovery efforts show great promise.”

Seabirds face numerous threats

Rising sea levels coupled with booming coastal development have wreaked havoc on natural seabird habitat and roosting sites, the report says. Seabird colonies on low-lying islands, like North Carolina’s barrier islands, are flooding more often. Marine heat waves are shocking their food sources.

Ravenous invasive species consume seabirds and their eggs in many coastal areas. They also become bycatch in many coastal fisheries and fall prey to plastic pollution and infectious disease, Audubon says.

“Protected nesting colonies and marine foraging areas can provide refuges for seabirds during extreme storm events,” the report says. “Policies that reduce fishing bycatch and plastics pollution can help mitigate direct human-caused stressors.

Most of the shorebird species highlighted in the report are long-distance migrants, which face a somewhat different set of challenges than temperate-nesting, shorter distance migrants like the American oystercatcher, Salmons said.

“To get between breeding and wintering grounds, these long-distance migrants must navigate a series of steppingstone sites where they stopover before continuing on,” Salmons wrote in an email. “Many of these are impacted by human presence on the coast, be it from beach renourishment or other coastal engineering projects that degrade habitat quality and prey availability.”

Waterfowl and waterbirds — ducks, rails, egrets, heron and the like — showed some of their long-term population gains level off but have fared better than their seaside cousins, according to the report.

In general, duck populations have grown 24% in the past half century and waterfowl were the only group of birds in the report that showed population gains. Of 20 species of duck measured, 14 were found to be increasing in population while one was stable and just five are declining.

Large-scale conservation policies and efforts from legislation like the North American Wetlands Conservation Act and the Duck Stamp program are partially responsible for the health of duck species in particular.

“But today, this legacy is in jeopardy,” the report said. “Loss of wetlands and grasslands is accelerating in key regions for waterfowl and wetland protections are being weakened. Environmental land-use changes are driving recent duck and marsh bird declines in many areas.”

Declining bird populations were laid bare in a 2019 study published in the journal Science that showed a net loss of 3 billion birds in North America over the past half-century. The 2025 State of the Birds report shows those losses are continuing.

But, Audubon stresses, conservation works. Coastal restoration, conservation ranching, forest renewal and seabird translocations “show how proactive, concerted efforts and strategic investments can recover bird populations,” the report says.

“The science is solid on how to bring birds back,” according to the report. “Private lands conservation programs, and voluntary conservation partnerships for working lands, hold some of the best opportunities for sparking immediate turnarounds for birds.”

Share their habitats

Policies aimed at reversing bird population decline can also benefit humans who share their habitats by creating healthier agricultural land, cleaner water and natural landscapes that better resist flooding, wildfire and drought, Audubon says.

Birds are also the natural foundation for a soaring outdoors industry. Around 100 million Americans are avid birdwatchers, not to mention hunters and anglers, all activities to which healthy bird populations are a keystone feature, Salmons said. Audubon puts the total economic impact of birding activity at $279 billion annually.

Regular folks can help support healthy bird populations by giving them room this summer, as they roost and lay their eggs along the North Carolina coast. Getting too close to a nest can scare parents away from eggs or hatchlings, Salmons said.

Human disturbance, in which recreational or other activities disrupt shorebirds’ survival behaviors, she said.

Such activities include people walking through resting or foraging flocks and allowing dogs or children to chase birds which wastes their energy and makes otherwise suitable habitat unavailable for their use. Repeated disturbance has a cumulative impact on birds at the coast.

“Just as running once to catch the mailman won’t cause a person to be too exhausted to cook dinner and clean the house but doing it all day can, being repeatedly disturbed over and over impacts the health of shorebirds,” Salmons said. “Compounding these challenges which relate to the heavy development and recreational use of coastal sites are issues related to climate change, such as impacts to Arctic nesting grounds, timing of resource availability, and other factors.”

Second in commentary photo-essay series, Tabb’s Trails, with coastal reporter, photographer and hiking enthusiast Kip Tabb.

It was a close thing, whether Jockey’s Ridge would be leveled for a development five decades ago.

If you find yourself at what is now the 426-acre Jockey’s Ridge State Park in Dare County, head north out of the parking lot and up one of the steepest dunes there.

In about a quarter mile, the disintegrating asphalt of a 50-year-old road is stark evidence that, if the late Carolista Baum had not stood in front of a bulldozer on Aug. 15, 1973, to prevent the sand dune system from being developed, a truly unique geological treasure would not exist today.

The North Carolina State Park System in 1975 established Jockey’s Ridge, what it calls the tallest living sand dune system on the Atlantic Coast. The Friends of Jockey’s Ridge State Park has organized a four-day, family friendly event starting Thursday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the state park. The friends group supports the state park in Nags Head.

Related: Take a hike Saturday to celebrate National Trails Day

Details and the itinerary for all programs being offered at no charge can be found on the nonprofit organization’s website.

Jockey’s Ridge is a remarkably complex environmental wonder.

It is a harsh environment. Where the sand is deepest and most active, nothing grows. But one of the ironies of what is left of the road is the roadbed stabilized the sand, and as the asphalt cracked, opening the soil to the elements, small thickets of pine took root.

There are self-guided trails in Jockey’s Ridge State Park.

The Soundside Nature Trail is a 1.2-mile loop that begins at the main parking lot by the visitor center, and the Tracks in the Sand Trail is a 0.6-mile loop trail beginning at the Soundside parking lot.

Depending on where the hike is going, the conditions can be strenuous. Hiking conditions are fine sand and steep inclines. It’s not necessary to be an athlete, but reasonable physical condition is important.

Visitors can explore all areas of Jockey’s Ridge State Park, but there are some things to know while there.

Take water with you, especially in the summer as conditions can be extremely hot and there is no drinking water anywhere, and insect repellant is a good idea.

When hiking in the thicket at the base of the main dune, be respectful of nature. There are a surprising number of trails and no need to create a new one.

Among the dunes where the soil has stabilized, flowering plants thrive and insect life is abundant.

There are a surprising number of flowering plants that flourish in Jockey’s Ridge, perhaps none as spectacular as a mound lily yucca.

As the flowers come into full bloom this time of year, pollinators and other insects swarm to the plants, such as the trumpet vines, which are prolific on the hillocks throughout the park.

The trumpet vines are just one of many flowering plants in Jockey’s Ridge where pollinators can be spotted, including red-spotted purple butterflies.

As the foliage thickens in spring and into summer, the sound of songbirds, like the gray catbird, is a constant chorus. Usually deep in the foliage, they are heard but not seen, but sometimes they’ll make an appearance.

Following a prescribed burn in April of this year, the largest thicket, which could almost be considered a small maritime forest, is showing signs of regeneration as summer approaches.

The wooded area on the Roanoke Sound is in the wind shadow of the largest dune in Jockey’s Ridge, and extends a little over a half mile from the parking lot and recreational beach at the southeast corner of the park.

The colors of a blue grosbeak spotted on a branch in the burn area, according to Cornell University’s All About Birds website, indicate a breeding male. The species is “uncommon but widespread across the southern United States.”

If the hike is going to be fairly long and include the Roanoke Sound shoreline, there is considerable underbrush and walking through while barefoot can be painful.

Waterfowl are a frequent sight as well. In a cove off the trail, two mallards shared a quiet moment. The drake kept bringing its foot to its head in what appeared to be an attempt to scratch something by his beak.

The North Carolina Mountains-to-Sea Trail crosses the state, connecting the eastern terminus in Jockey’s Ridge State Park on the Outer Banks and the western terminus in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

First in a new commentary feature, Tabb’s Trails.

Verdant and beautiful, coastal North Carolina boasts hidden treasures of nature. For the most part, the maritime forest reserves and parks that are found throughout the area require no special equipment or knowledge to explore, just a willingness to spend some time enjoying the environment’s beauty and the unexpected surprises it offers.

Sandy Run Park on the The Woods Road in Kitty Hawk is a 16-acre town park. The trail is a completely level, half-mile loop around a pond and marsh that is half boardwalk and half gravel and packed soil.

For birdwatchers, it is a small slice of paradise with a remarkable variety of birds in the trees and feeding in the ponds. For families with children, it is as good an introduction as there could be to the beauty and fascination of the natural world.

Spring has returned to Sand Run Park in Kitty Hawk.

Regular visitors for the past four or five years, the osprey pair have been busy repairing their nest that was destroyed in a storm last September.

As the weather warms, the winter residents leave, and there is perhaps no winter bird as ubiquitous as the yellow-rumped warbler. It’s rare to see one after April 1.

By Outer Banks standards, it was a snowy winter with one storm covering Sandy Run with more than 6 inches of snow. Among the reeds in the marsh a downy woodpecker found a meal.

During spring, summer and fall, the waters of Sandy Run are most alive. If there is symbol for the park, it would be the yellow-bellied sliders. There are also large snapping turtles and an occasional painted turtle, but it’s the yellow-bellied sliders that can be seen everywhere in the ponds.

For families with children, lettuce is a great snack for the turtles.

With abundant fish, frogs and food, blue heron are regular residents, but they are not the only member of the heron family to call Sandy Run home.

Especially in the spring and summer, green heron perch on tree limbs and deadfall.

Woodpeckers have been working on the trees for years. Red-bellied woodpeckers are the most common, although downy woodpeckers are seen from time to time, as well as an occasional pileated woodpecker.

Talkative, highly visible and ever-present, tweeting cardinals are year-round residents.

In the summer, the dense foliage of a maritime forest surrounding a coastal marsh teems with life. The intense red of trumpet vines seems to attract pollinators in extraordinary numbers.

Part of Duck Pond Creek, Sandy Run is a catch-and-release-only fishing site with three kayak launches. The creek connects with Kitty Hawk Bay, although paddling to the bay includes a carry on foot across The Woods Road.

A wild bird rescue organization in Brunswick County is offering a reward for information leading to the culprits who’ve been mangling brown pelicans.

The $10,000 reward, a first in Sea Biscuit Wildlife Shelter’s nearly 20-year history, signifies a breaking point for shelter founder and Oak Island resident Mary Ellen Rogers.

“What I want to do is make them stop,” she said.

No one has been able to pinpoint exactly who “them” is behind what has become a common winter occurrence of dead and severely injured brown pelicans washing ashore on North Carolina’s predominately southernly beaches.

Over the course of a decade, a noticeable number of dead and injured pelicans have been found on shores from Emerald Isle to Topsail Island and down to Brunswick County beaches.

“We get them every year and it’s very depressing,” Rogers said.

The uptick is usually within the same two-month timeframe of each year, January through February, when trawling is closed off other states’ coasts, but remains open off of North Carolina’s beaches. This gives out-of-state commercial fishers two extra months of work they would not have otherwise working off their state shores.

Pelicans are attracted to catch being scooped up in nets from commercial fishing boat trawlers.

Rogers said you can see a “cloud” of these birds gliding overhead of a trawler earning a day’s catch. The problem comes in when a pelican wants in on the catch being hoisted from the sea because this is when it likely becomes caught in the net.

A fisherman, or several for that matter, might use a tool to puncture a hole in the birds’ wing or grab it by the end of its wing, swing it in a circular pattern until the wing breaks, then toss it overboard.

The latter is indicative of an overwhelming majority of injuries dozens of brown pelicans suffered last year, when 60 washed up dead on the shores of the island Rogers calls home.

All but two of the 15 pelicans she sheltered last year had the same injuries to their left wings, just above the elbow.

Rogers describes the visibly graphic injuries as torsion fractures, which occurs when a bone is broken by a twisting motion that leaves it looking like a corkscrew.

A Florida-based wildlife pathologist confirmed one of the critically injured pelicans that washed ashore in Oak Island last year suffered such a fracture, Rogers said.

Though an adult pelican can have a wing span of more than 6 feet, they typically weigh no more than 8 pounds because their bones are hollow, which means, when broken, the bone cannot be pinned.

In other words, there’s no fix to this type of injury in a pelican. So, injured birds that wash ashore alive have to be euthanized.

“We have to do something,” Rogers said. “I can’t just keep complaining about it every year. I just want the injuries to stop.”

She told Coastal Review Monday in a telephone interview that only one dead pelican has been found on Oak Island’s beach since Jan. 1. But she suspects she’ll be getting more calls of reports of dead and injured pelicans as February temperatures steadily hold at those warmer from the previous month.

Rogers hopes the pot of money filled by private donors will entice someone to come forward with evidence needed to nab those responsible for the injuries.

The reward is advertised on posters Rogers tacked up at Oak Island marinas on Oak Island and in Holden Beach fish stores, places where out-of-state commercial fishers might stop to gas up and pick up odds and ends.

The signs were posted in mid-December, shortly after Rogers organized a meeting with local law enforcement, wildlife officials and representatives with the U.S. Coast Guard to discuss the ongoing problem.

Pelicans are a migratory species that fly south in winter and return in late February to nesting areas in North Carolina, including on small islands in the Cape Fear River, and Pamlico and Bogue sounds. They can also be found in the state throughout the year.

Pelicans are protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which prohibits people from injuring, killing, possessing or harassing these birds without a permit, Miranda Turner, a wildlife health biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission’s Game and Furbearer Program, said in an email.

“Penalties for breaking the (act) can vary widely depending on whether the person knew that what they were doing was illegal, how many birds were taken, and more,” she wrote.

Those include misdemeanor charges, fines up to several thousand dollars, and prison.

The reward Sea Biscuit Wildlife Shelter has posted will remain in effect through March 1.

Anyone with information leading to the arrest and conviction of those intentionally harming pelicans in the waters off Brunswick County may report so by visiting NC Wild TIP (Turn In Poachers). Witnesses may dial 911 as a secondary reporting measure.

Featured Image

An egret hunts along the shore of an icy marsh Thursday near Pelletier Creek in Morehead City. Don’t look for a quick thaw as much of coastal North Carolina is under a winter weather advisory from 4 p.m. Friday until 10 a.m. Saturday. The forecast calls for the potential for light accumulations of ice and snow, although little to none is expected from Hatteras Island to Ocracoke Island. Photo: Dylan Ray

This story has been updated to include funeral arrangements.

Avid birder, wildlife enthusiast and conservationist John Oliver Fussell III, 75, of Morehead City, is being remembered for his decades of contributions to raising awareness of often-overlooked environmental issues affecting the North Carolina coast, particularly its plants and animals, of which he had a deep understanding.

Fussell, who studied zoology at North Carolina State University, died Friday, Dec. 27, 2024, at home. His fellow environmental advocates and scientists have shared their fond remembrances in the days since Fussell’s death.

Paul Branch Jr., who retired last year from his role as park ranger and historian at Fort Macon State Park, shared some details with Coastal Review on Fussell’s early work.

Fussell first held an internship at the park in summer 1974, studying the Theodore Roosevelt Natural Area and its resources and doing preliminary work to lay out a nature trail.

Then, in fall 1975, he was hired under the Comprehensive Employment Training Act, or CETA, Manpower Program both to provide a “State Parks ‘presence’ at the Natural Area during the construction of the Marine Resources Center,” now the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores, and to develop the nature trail, Branch said.

“Based on his previous intern work, he established a half-mile trail through the maritime forest along the northeast corner of the tract to the salt marsh along the sound and back,” Branch explained.

The trail was named the Hoffman Nature Trail in honor of Alice Green Hoffman, the relative of the Roosevelt family who had owned and managed the large tracts of land on Bogue Banks from which the Theodore Roosevelt Natural Area had been donated.

Fussell worked there through summer 1976, and that fall under the CETA program, he worked at Fort Macon State Park as an interpreter to give nature and history programs at the park year-round.

“In addition to giving the usual history guided tours and slide shows at the fort, Fussell also began giving bird and nature walks to the public, which were well received. He also created a birding checklist for the park. In the fall and winter of 1977, he worked sorting through and cataloguing museum artifacts at the park,” Branch said, adding that Fussell left the park in 1978 for other pursuits but returned periodically over the years to take birding groups around the park.

Coastal Review contributor and former Hammocks Beach State Park superintendent Sam Bland said he first met Fussell in summer 1978, when both were working at Fort Macon State Park.

“John was the historian/naturalist and I was a park attendant,” Bland said. “I was envious of John as he was always out giving tours of the fort or taking people on nature hikes while I spent most of my time mowing the mosquito-infested grasses of the fort. But we did get to spend some time birding together and he introduced me to the painted buntings. He was a birding mentor to many and I think that is when he was happiest, sharing his knowledge with others.”

Bland said he considered Fussell to be a friend, but, he clarified, their relationship was more on a professional level.

“During my years at Hammocks Beach State Park, we would collaborate to conduct bird surveys on Bear Island and the surrounding marshes. He was my go-to person, as he was to many, for any birding identification or related questions. Often, he would give me a call to see if I had seen a species of bird that he had recently seen further up the coast,” Bland explained. “If it was a specific species of interest, such as a rare, unusual or out of season sighting, he would quiz me about details as he wasn’t going to consider it a confirmed sighting unless he was sure. One winter, a fairly large group of red phalaropes, which is an offshore bird, were spotted close to shore. John wanted to know if I had seen them off of Bear Island, which I had. But it took some convincing to reassure John that I had actually seen this specific species.”

Bland also noted that while well known as an ornithologist, Fussell was also a skilled botanist who would arrive at first light on the days of planned maintenance and cleanups at the Hoop Pole Creek nature trail in Atlantic Beach to put flagging tape on the rare plants to make sure they didn’t get trimmed and were protected.

“He was a great advocate for preservation, protection and restoration of our coastal resources. His ornithological and botanical surveys were instrumental in documenting our natural coastal heritage, especially during times of rampant development. His knowledge was an invaluable resource that will be greatly missed,” Bland said.

The day after Fussell’s death, Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Adviser Derb Carter shared on an online birding forum that with Fussell’s death, North Carolina had lost a “giant in the birding community,” of which he had been a fixture for 60 years.

“He knew the birds and every birding corner along his beloved NC coast like no one else,” Carter posted, referencing Fussell’s book published in in 1994 by the University of North Carolina Press, “Birder’s Guide to Coastal North Carolina” which “remains the definitive guide.”

Carter noted that Fussell “cared deeply” about protecting important habitats and as an accomplished naturalist contributed his knowledge and observations to the identification and preservation of lands by state and federal agencies and conservation organizations.

Among Fussell’s many contributions to promoting birding in the state, Carter explained that Fussell regularly volunteered to lead birding field trips for Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, Wings Over Water Wildlife Festival on the Outer Banks, and other birding events.

“The one thing you could almost be certain of on one of John’s trips is you were going to get your feet soaked within the first hour. If the shortest way was dry, John would take the long way through the marsh or tidal flats on the chance of flushing a rail, sparrow, or wren,” Carter said.

He led Morehead City’s Christmas Bird Count for more than 60 years and participated in the counts in Wilmington and Masonboro Island.

“Sun, wind, rain, or snow he would be dropped off on the north end (of Masonboro Island) by boat first thing in the morning and walk the eight and a half miles to the south end to be picked up late afternoon.  The gulls, terns, shorebirds, and pelicans will be looking for him on Saturday and will miss him. We will all miss him,” Carter said.

Peter Vankevich, co-publisher of the Ocracoke Observer on Ocracoke Island, is a bird enthusiast who founded and serves as compiler of the Ocracoke and Portsmouth Island Christmas bird counts. He’s also an active supporter of the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust’s longtime efforts to protect Ocracoke’s 132-acre Springer’s Point Preserve.

“I first met John some years ago when he led a spring walk for the N.C. Coastal Land Trust through Springer’s Point on Ocracoke Island —  not for birds, but to point out the native plants of which seemed to have an equal amount of passion,” Vankevich said. “He was a gracious field trip leader.”

In recent years, Fussell frequently visited the massive wetland restoration project at North River Wetlands Preserve in Carteret County, documenting the changing bird communities as the wetlands are restored, Carter said. The preserve is a 6,000-acre restoration project of the Coastal Federation.

When recognized in 2017 by the North Carolina Coastal Federation with a Pelican Award “For Enduring Commitment to Preserving the Spectacular Natural Heritage of Our Coast,” he said that for many years he focused on environmental issues for which his involvement is disproportionately important.

For example, “Issues that I know a lot about but which are mostly ignored by the general environmental community,” he explained. “I have mostly focused on protecting rare plants and habitats in a major reserve of native biodiversity in our backyard, the Croatan National Forest.”

Fussell told Coastal Review at the time that he spent countless hours documenting the amount and numbers of rare plants in the Croatan National Forest, and sometimes their disappearance, and then getting that information on the radar screen by providing it to the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program and the U.S. Forest Service.

He added that he monitored projects, often at several stages, to make sure information did not get ignored or forgotten.

“I find it rewarding to find that if you persevere, sometimes you can make a difference,” Fussell said.

In the mid-1980s, Fussell worked with the Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, on an effort to protect what is now Hoop Pole Creek Preserve area in Atlantic Beach from a massive development project.

“That effort turned out to be ultimately successful and it was a major milestone in the development of the Coastal Federation as an important factor in addressing environmental issues. I found out that sometimes you can make a difference,” Fussell said in 2017.

There was an outpouring of condolences and memories on the birding forum after Carter’s announcement.

Ross McGregor of Stirling, Scotland, previously of Beaufort, wrote that he joined Fussell on Sunday morning birding trips.

“What really struck me about John were two things. Firstly he wore his vast knowledge so lightly. He was a great communicator. He never bragged and was always wanting to learn,” McGregor wrote. “Secondly, he could ask questions like few I have met. He would quiz me about my research on red-cockaded woodpeckers asking questions that really made me think. I think the questions were coming from his desire to know more and understand better, rather than to demonstrate my lack of knowledge and understanding. I learned so much from these chats. For me, it was these things made spending time birding with JF such a joy. He was a thoroughly decent bloke and the world is a poorer place without him.”

Harry LeGrand, who worked for the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, said on the forum that he and Fussell were in some of the same classes at N.C. State University in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

“He was the premier naturalist for 50+ years for the central NC coast,” LeGrand explained. “Not just with his knowledge of birds but also of botany and various other biological sciences, such as ecology and natural communities. He provided the N.C. Natural Heritage Program, where I worked for 31 years, with numerous reports of rare plants, especially from his beloved Croatan National Forest.”

LeGrand added that Fussell’s 1994 guide “was a birder’s ‘bible’ and is still useful today” because so many public sites have not substantially changed since.

“I will greatly miss JF, as he called himself, as will so many other folks who knew him, went on his many field trips, and got to learn so much from him,” he said.

Bob Lewis of Durham called Fussell “one of the giants” of North Carolina birding of the last 50 years.

Walker Golder, previously with the National Audubon Society, said on the forum that with the death of Fussell, “North Carolina has lost a great person in the bird world.”

Golder said he came to know Fussell in the mid-1980s as part of North Carolina’s early waterbird surveys.

“I consulted him often in the decades thereafter about various areas of the coast. Rest assured, he had been there. He was always glad to chat and would share the unwritten history of the regular birds and the rarities at the site. Birders visiting the coast from other states would often call my office seeking information about where they could see a particular bird. John’s book- A Birder’s Guide to Coastal North Carolina -was (and remains) the source for finding birds on the coast. I always recommended John’s book and occasionally received a call back from folks impressed with the thorough and detailed information. But that’s who I found John to be.”

His funeral will be at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 8, at Noe-Brooks Funeral Home and Crematory in Morehead City. Visitation will precede the service, beginning at 2 p.m.

Editor Mark Hibbs contributed to this report.

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.

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A belted kingfisher, or Megaceryle alcyon, surveys its autumnal surroundings from a perch, Nov. 14 at North River Preserve in Carteret County. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service describes the species as busy birds that burrow into the earth, patrol stream and river banks, and are “always ready to dive down and snag a meal.” Photo: Nick Green

There are some old fishing maxims that people throw around a lot, and a lot of them are misunderstood.

One in particular that really confuses people is, “Just follow the birds.”

I’ve been riding in the boat with novice anglers as they point out every bird they see as if that will lead them to the Promised Land. While it is true that birds tell us a lot of what is going on out there, it’s important to understand what each type of bird is, how it fishes, and what it means to us as anglers.

Let’s go through the most popular ones that we’ll see on our coast on any given day.

Pelicans

We’ll start with perhaps our most unusual bird, the pelican. As noted by American poet and journalist Dixon Lanier Merritt, “Oh, a wondrous bird is the pelican! His beak holds more than his belican.”

As we see them skimming the wavetops or gliding across a causeway, they are always looking into the water. They can see schools of fish a foot or two under the water and unerringly dive on top of them and scoop them up into their balloon-like bills. I have often seen them diving without a gamefish of any kind for miles in any direction. However, they can be helpful.

I was with a friend fishing a shoreline in the New River near Sneads Ferry and not having much luck. I noticed pelicans diving on mullet schools well out away from the shore. I could see mullet skipping every which way as the pelicans would fly over. We casually cruised over to the area and started making casts with our topwater plugs. We both hooked up on solid speckled trout almost right away and continued to do so the rest of the day.

Another time that pelicans can help us is during the fall migrations. When large concentrations of glass minnows are running the beach, you might see pelicans diving on them. Look for the cloud of bait in the water. If you’re really lucky, you may see them doing what I call “rafting,” where a dozen or more will be sitting on the surface just dipping their beaks into a bait ball of glass minnows or bay anchovies. Either of these situations is often accompanied by schools of feeding false albacore, bluefish or Spanish mackerel, and it’s worth throwing a small jig or minnow imitating fly.

So, the moral here is, if you’re not doing very well, and trying to figure out where your next cast should be, at least let the pelicans tell you where the bait fish are, and hopefully something bigger will be just behind.

Shorebirds

Next is wading birds: herons, egrets and other shorebirds. While not necessarily a bird you’ll be searching for, if you are fishing in a creek or marsh and wondering if there’s any life there, a heron wading the shoreline will at least alert you to the presence of small baitfish. This can be just the sign you need to make a few casts.

I have even pulled into a canal with docks and lifts and was just about to turn around when I saw a heron. I stopped and made “One More Cast.” Boom! A redfish ate my soft plastic jerkbait and I stayed there and caught fish until the tide ran out two hours later. It doesn’t happen a whole lot. But it’s worth paying attention.

Arctic terns are present here most of the summer. They are helpful to a point. They will definitely alert you to the presence of baitfish. But since they can dive under and pick them off with no help from below, they are not always good indicators of gamefish activity below.

Having said that there will be times in the summer when you will see terns diving and Spanish mackerel breaking the surface sporadically. Trolling is a good option in these situations because the fish will be spread out. I still prefer casting a small spoon or fly.

Other seabirds

Another bird that dives deep on small fish is the gannet. These will show up in our waters in late fall as larger schools of menhaden begin to arrive. They will dive from pretty high, cross their wingtips behind them, and enter the water like an Olympic diver. Often, they can go down to depths exceeding 70 feet.

Gannets are a good indicator of menhaden. Northeast striped bass fishermen love them because it will lead them to striped bass and big bluefish. Sometimes large red drum will be under our menhaden schools and possibly king mackerel. But it’s not a guarantee.

I’ve caught more sharks on jigs bumped under these schools than anything else.

Gulls are the No. 1 bird that anglers should concern themselves with.

In the summer we will see a lot of the laughing gulls, they have black heads and make that distinctive “laughing” call. Later on in the summer and into fall, we will see the little gray gulls called ring-beaked gulls.

If you are driving your boat across the water and look up to see a flock of gulls walking along the avenue, it’s worth checking out. They are voracious feeders and are always on the lookout for an easy meal. That means that they don’t often dive into the water like gannets or terns, but when a school of gamefish has baitfish on the move, they will notice and be right there when the minnows push out of the water to escape the jaws below. It is the gulls who will be there to pick up the ones the fish miss out on. It’s pretty frantic.

I always tell people to look for gulls “dancing” on the surface. This is when it’s really on. The action below is so frantic that the gulls don’t even want to pick up and fly up but want to stay as close to the surface as they can. This is a sure sign of false albacore, bluefish, or Spanish mackerel and will often lead to a day full of memories, which is what it’s all about really.

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Blaze, a piping plover shown here on the beach in Waukegan, Illinois, has returned for the second consecutive year to winter at Masonboro Inlet in New Hanover County. The small, but determined piping plover was abandoned before she hatched and became among the first captive-reared chicks to be released in Illinois from the University of Michigan Biological Station in 2023. Within about two months of her release into the wild, Blaze migrated south to spend the winter at Masonboro Inlet, according to Audubon North Carolina. Audubon officials spotted Blaze Aug. 15 at the inlet, returning from Waukegan, where she successfully raised three chicks.

Piping plover are federally listed as threatened on the East Coast and listed as endangered in the Great Lakes region.

Sandy spits created by inlets provide havens for shorebirds to rest and roost and, for some, nesting habitat.

“No one else would be monitoring for Piping Plovers in these areas if we didn’t,” said Lindsay Addison, coastal biologist at Audubon North Carolina, in a statement. “We monitor the areas around Wilmington as part of ongoing shorebird surveys, along with our regular work to protect and manage shorebird habitat, including at the south end of Wrightsville Beach.”

Photo courtesy of the Lake County (Illinois) Audubon Society.

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A wedge of egrets fish in a salt marsh along North River near Beaufort. Photo: Dylan Ray

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A black-necked stilt dips its bill as it feeds in standing water at sunrise July 30 at the Oregon Inlet Fishing Center in Nags Head. Reader Brian Horsley of Nags Head submitted this image, noting that he captured the photo July 30 while on his way to work. When “it rains a lot and we get big freshwater puddles Black Neck Stilts pay it a visit,” he said with the submission.

Partial to freshwater pools, marshes and shallow lakes, they are vulnerable to habitat loss and pesticides, conservation groups say. But their range is expanding and they are known to take quick advantage of what Audubon describes as “artificial habitat.”

Submit your photo.

This story has been updated.

Any time Barry Fulton spots a species of bird in his yard he has not seen before, he can’t help but ask himself the same question.

Did I do that?

“You see new species coming and you just ponder, was that because I have more water sources or more plants that have berries for a food source?” Fulton said. “Next thing you know, you’re downloading apps to identify birds.”

Fulton and his wife, Debi Gallo, are among dozens of St. James residents who have in the past several months become part of a unique, yet growing club of property owners who’ve worked to get their town certified as a Community Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Foundation.

St. James officially earned the designation in late February, making it the only coastal town certified in the state. Wilmington is registered but not yet certified — that could happen next year.

To date, nearly 20 towns, cities, communities and neighborhoods in North Carolina have achieved the designation, one that denotes areas where residents have put in the time to create and enhance wildlife habitat on their land.

Proponents of the program say earning the designation is not particularly difficult or expensive.

“In someone’s typical yard they’ve already done some landscaping, so a lot of people are well on their way in what would be needed to certify their property,” said St. James resident Ernie McLaney.

McLaney, member at-large on the St. James Conservancy’s executive board, moved from Charlotte to the coast a couple of years ago to settle in a life of quasi-retirement with his wife, bringing with him a wealth of knowledge about the National Wildlife Federation’s Wildlife Habitat Certification program.

He was one of the originators in supporting Matthews earn its certification in 2012. Three years later, Charlotte picked up the designation, making it, at the time, the largest certified city east of the Mississippi.

McLaney said he was immediately struck by what the town of about 7,000 residents had to offer as a wildlife habitat community.

“When I saw the beauty and amount of tree canopy that St. James has designed into this development here I was just really blown away,” he said.

Roughly 42% of land within the town, which incorporated in the mid-1990s, has been set aside as natural preserve. Natural buffers cushion areas along N.C. Highways 211 and 906, main county thoroughfares that intersect at the town’s northwest corner.

“With all of that in mind and seeing that people were incorporating native plants, bird feeders and birdhouses in their landscape, I thought that this would be an easy project to take on,” McLaney said.

He reached out to the conservancy with the idea, eventually landing him on the nonprofit’s board. Soon he would discover that around 45 properties in St. James were already certified. The requirement to become certified was 150 individual wildlife habitats from everyone including homeowners and churches to fire stations and schools.

The conservancy, with help from organizations including The Garden Club at St. James, hosted a number of community environmental education and outreach programs to spread the word.

“It took us less than a year to get St. James certified,” McLaney said. “Record time. We were impressed.”

Today, around 165 properties in the town are certified.

Certification can be as simple as placing a bird bath or other water feature, birdhouses or nesting boxes and feeders, or planting berry-bearing shrubs in your yard.

“It’s something you can do at your own pace as your time and finances allow,” McLaney said.

That’s a message he hopes resonates throughout other communities in coastal North Carolina.

“It’s an easy lift for some and it’s a recognized process that if people see habitat destruction in their community from growing developments they can counter some of that loss by enhancing what they have in their yard,” McLaney said.

Fulton agreed.

“It’s important that we maintain habitat for our wildlife,” he said. “There’s so much of the habitat that is getting clear cut for development. Everybody can do their fair share to provide some more shelter. They’re getting chased from their natural environments in every way. It’s important to do what we can now.”

CHAPEL HILL — Wildlife advocates, citing the threat to migratory birds, have filed a challenge in federal court to block the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from allowing an experimental algaecide treatment of Lake Mattamuskeet.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club, filed the lawsuit Monday in the Eastern District of North Carolina. The groups seek to block the plan in Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge until the Fish and Wildlife Service performs a more thorough analysis that “takes a hard look at the toxic algaecide’s harms and the available alternatives.”

The groups point to the product’s former Environmental Protection Agency labeling showing it as toxic to birds. They note that shallow Lake Mattamuskeet is important habitat for more than 250 bird species including swans, ducks and geese. 

Related: State issues certificate for Lake Mattamuskeet treatment

“A bird sanctuary is no place to experiment with a chemical that is toxic to birds,” said Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Ramona McGee, who is leader of the law center’s Wildlife Program. “We’re asking the Fish and Wildlife Service to put the mission and purpose of this wildlife refuge first, and not turn wild birds into lab rats when there are much better ways available to maintain the health of the lake.”

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality said Thursday its Division of Water Resources had approved a certificate of coverage to allow BlueGreen Water Technologies to begin the pilot study to treat for cyanobacteria in select parts of the freshwater lake June 1.

Fish and Wildlife is collaborating on the proposed treatment with the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences.

Officials say the pelleted product is safe after it’s dissolved in water. Advocates disagree.

Related: USFWS plans to chemically treat part of Lake Mattamuskeet

“It might seem reasonable to assume that the federal government would refrain from using a national bird sanctuary to test a private company’s experimental algaecide, particularly one that reads ‘toxic to birds’ on the label, and yet here we are,” said Erin Carey, acting director, N.C. Chapter of Sierra Club. “The North Carolina Sierra Club is proud to stand between the delicate and irreplaceable beauty of Lake Mattamuskeet and the casual disregard of corporate interest.” 

“The Fish and Wildlife Service should do everything in its power to conserve this important bird sanctuary,” said Jane Davenport, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife. “Instead, FWS is giving the green light for a private company to turn a wild sanctuary into a laboratory for experimental, unproven treatments with known dangers to the very wildlife the refuge is intended to protect.”

The state has signed off on a controversial pilot study of a pesticide’s effectiveness in combatting the troublesome and pervasive blue-green algae in Lake Mattamuskeet to begin next month.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality said Thursday its Division of Water Resources had approved a certificate of coverage to allow BlueGreen Water Technologies to conduct a pilot study of a treatment for cyanobacteria within a limited area of the state’s largest freshwater lake starting June 1.

The certificate falls under the general permitting process for pesticide applications, DEQ said.

The pilot treatment is a collaboration with the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. A 400-acre total of four isolated bays around the lake’s perimeter are to be treated. Officials said that amounts to 1% of the more-than-40,000-acre lake’s surface area.

Related: USFWS plans to chemically treat part of Lake Mattamuskeet

Environmental advocates have warned that the treatment imperils migrating waterfowl for which the Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge is known.

The lake comprises most of the refuge, which is managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service, which issued a final environmental assessment for the cyanobacteria treatment in March, along with a finding of no significant impact.

Officials say the formed-pellet product is safe once dissolved in water.

Permit files are available online.

The certificate of coverage requires monitoring data to be provided to the Institute of Marine Sciences, and to be made available to the division.

Officials noted that the lake’s water quality and clarity had been in decline due to the flow of excessive nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, and other factors. In 2016, the lake was listed on North Carolina’s 303(d) list for elevated acidity, or pH, and chlorophyll a.

For more information about harmful algal blooms in North Carolina, or to report an algal bloom or fish kill, find information about the DWR Algae Lab online.

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A mallard strikes a semaphore-like pose signaling the letter “R” as viewed over the weekend from the dike at the Roanoke Island Marshes Dedicated Nature Preserve. Covering almost 1,900 acres of marsh and wetlands, the preserve is possibly the least well-known of the protected natural areas on the Outer Banks. Although most of the preserve is impenetrable, a 1.3-mile trail along an impoundment is, at times, a birder’s delight. Photo: Kip Tabb

Guest commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

MANNS HARBOR – Here, on the front lines of the battle against climate change, the war looks lost.

Point Peter Road leads straight into the Croatan Sound where rising seas, higher tides, and monstrous storms batter the fragile coastline. The saltwater poisons and erodes the peaty soil before what’s left disappears under the relentless waves. A man-made canal carries the seawater inland where it kills cypresses and pines and turns the forest into shrubby marsh. Freshwater, blocked from running into the bay by the rising sound, pools under trees and kills them.

This corner of the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge stands no higher than one foot.

“This particular stretch of the coastline, due to the hydrology, experiences extremely high rates of erosion,” says Sarah Toner, the visitor services manager for the Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuges Complex. “This is ground zero.”

All, however, may not be lost. A healthy infusion of climate-fighting cash — $27.5 million — from the Inflation Reduction Act will likely help Alligator River and a handful of other nearby refuges and state lands keep the ravages of climate change at bay. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and partners will deploy “nature-based solutions,” including oyster reefs, marsh sills, dredge spoils, and re-wetted peatlands, to protect the coast from a steadily warming world.

“The threat is that more of these communities out here will become really challenging places to live with more flooding, more soil erosion, and more frequent wildfires,” says Chris Baillie, the climate adaptation coordinator for the North Carolina Coastal Federation. “There is a need to be really judicious in how climate funding is spent because there simply isn’t enough money out there to address all the climate vulnerabilities faced by people and nature.”

‘We’re trying to hang on’

The Alligator River refuge — “mile after uninhabited mile on both Highways 64 and 264,” reads a 1990 Service brochure – is an otherworldly expanse of dredged peat fields, fresh and brackish marshes, pocket forests, and lakes. Established in 1984, the refuge is surrounded by water and serves as the second line of defense, behind the Outer Banks, against a marauding Mother Nature. The 152,000-acre refuge is one of nine, low-lying refuges in eastern North Carolina, all facing varying degrees of climate-induced threats.

Its purpose: protect the pocosin wetlands, which provide ample habitat for the wintering waterfowl that fill the skies, the black bears in numbers found nowhere else on the East Coast, and the elusive, and federally endangered, Red Wolves. Another goal: to save the eastern black rail, “the most secretive of the secretive marsh birds and one of the least understood bird species in North America,” according to the Atlantic Coast Joint Venture, a federal-state bird conservation partnership.

The birds, federally listed as threatened, once flitted across salt marshes from Connecticut to Florida, including those alongside Point Peter Road. But habitat destruction, due to drained marshes and rising seas, has decimated the population by 90 percent. Maybe 350 breeding pairs remain, according to the Joint Venture, “a catastrophic decline over the past 30 years.”

Seas, worldwide, rose on average 1.2 millimeters a year for most of the 20th century. Since 1993, though, the rate has more than doubled to 3.2 millimeters, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Yet reports show the seas have been rising three to four times as much as the global rate between North Carolina and Massachusetts which leads to more frequent inundations and salt marsh loss.

“We’re losing a lot of land,” says Fred Wurster, a Service geomorphologist who’s leading the climate-fighting project. “Not only is the shoreline retreating rapidly, but the habitat we manage is transitioning very rapidly to salt marsh or open water. It creates a situation where we’re trying to hang on to what’s here long enough to give species a chance to move further inland.”

Much of Alligator River, like much of the coastal plain, was logged of cypress and Atlantic white cedar and drained for farmland which dried out the peaty soils. When the mega-farms proved unprofitable, the scarred and desiccated fields became refuges and wildlife management areas. Yet the salty water from surrounding estuaries creeps relentlessly inland poisoning the soil and further drying the spongy peat bogs. Without rain, the carbon-rich pocosins become tinderboxes for wildfires that can last months and cause significant damage to the ecosystem, and global health.

In 1955, a fire on the other side of the Alligator River burned 203,000 acres. Thirty years later, the Allen Road fire burned 95,000 acres. The 2008 Evans Road fire, though, sticks most in locals’ craws. It burned — above and below ground in the deep peat — for seven months before it was extinguished. Air quality as far north as Norfolk, Virginia, suffered. More than 40,000 acres, mostly in the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, burned. The Service estimated that the fire released six million tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Peatlands cover only three percent of the world’s land mass, yet they store twice as much carbon as all the planet’s forests. They are enormous carbon “sinks.” Duke University calculated in 2022 that rewetting and restoring 250,000 acres of abandoned peat bogs across the Southeast could prevent 4.3 million tons of carbon dioxide from escaping into the atmosphere each year.

“Southern pocosin peatlands punch far above their weight in terms of their capacity for carbon storage,” says Curtis Richardson, founding director of the Duke University Wetland Center. “Acre for acre, they can store significantly more carbon than forests or grasslands.”

Largest climate-fighting act

Arch Bracher stood at the end of a long pier casting mullet into Rose Bay where the freshwater Pamlico River turns brackish at the Pamlico Sound. It was an unseasonably warm, Carolina-blue morning and the red drum weren’t biting. And neither was Bracher when talk turned to climate change.

“They talk about sea level rise, blah, blah, blah,” says Bracher, a charter boat captain who runs the Pelican out of Oregon Inlet. “But the ocean’s not getting higher. It’s just eating away stuff. They’re talking about the water rising one inch over the next 100 years. I think that’s just propaganda.”

A forest of dead, ghostly pines stood in the adjoining Swanquarter National Wildlife Refuge. Rising seas have eaten away the banks on both sides of the Bell Island Pier. A study a decade ago showed that an average of three feet of peaty soil disappeared each year due to ever-higher water. In 2012, The Nature Conservancy and the Service built a limestone sill 30 feet offshore. The reef reduces the power of the waves that pound the shoreline. Erosion slows. Sand and silt accumulate between the shore and the sill creating new beach for plants to take hold and marsh to reform. Oysters and mussels attach to the marl further strengthening, and renourishing, the reef.

“We’re building good oyster habitat, and getting recruitment, which helps with water quality as well,” says Aaron McCall, a regional land steward for The Nature Conservancy. “We don’t want to reach a tipping point where the system gets destroyed and it doesn’t provide any service to the environment or the local community.”

The Conservancy surveyed 10 sites — six protected by the reef, four unprotected — near the pier to determine whether erosion continues apace. Erosion stopped or slowed at all protected sites; it continued at the unprotected sites.

Limestone sills and oyster reefs are major components of so-called living shorelines and hallmarks of nature-based solutions to climate change. And they are precisely the types of projects funded by the Inflation Reduction Act that will be built across eastern North Carolina.

The IRA, at $369 billion, is the largest climate-fighting package in U.S. history. Its goal is to move the country fully towards renewable energy while reducing greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change. Billions of dollars are dedicated to agricultural conservation, forest protection, and wildfire risk reduction.

“There is often an assumption that tackling the climate crisis requires only technological solutions,” the White House said in November 2022 describing the IRA’s nature-based offerings. “Too often, the power of nature is overlooked and undervalued as a core element of a more just, livable world today and for future generations.”

The Service received $250 million; nearly half will help restore federal wildlife refuges and state wildlife management areas “that have been affected by adverse weather events.” No other project received as much money — $27.5 million — as the Albemarle-Pamlico region. The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission will likely get $5 million of that amount for climate-fighting work at wildlife management areas across the coastal plain.

There’s really nothing new or radical about enlisting nature to solve nature’s problems. The Roosevelt administration, during the Dust Bowl, paid farmers to plant 220 million trees from Texas to North Dakota to reduce erosion, protect livestock, and create wildlife habitat. Oyster reefs have long been deployed off Florida. Sand is pumped on barrier islands across the Mississippi River Delta. The Service and partners also spent $38 million pumping sand, restoring marsh, and replumbing the hydrology at Delaware’s Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge which was decimated by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

Nature-based engineering contrasts the coastal hardening tactics — sea walls, jetties, bulkheads, rip-rap — of centuries past. Sea walls, for example, only protect shorelines for so long against rising seas. More vicious storms and hurricanes easily top them. And the walls may protect one section of coast while causing erosion along another section.

“Nature-based solutions are definitely the way to go because you’re designing something that takes into account the natural hydrology and actual landscape in the first place,” Wurster says. “The things you’re building will be more stable in the long run. You’re not fighting against nature. Plus, these strategies tend to be more resilient and less expensive in the long run.”

Buying time

Climate change’s past, present, and alarming future unspools along Mashoes Road on the Alligator River refuge’s north end. A somewhat healthy marsh on the right gives way to shrub, pine, and oak on the left. In the distance, the skeletal remains of once-prominent trees hug East Lake. Eventually, inexorably, the salt water will reach the forest and destroy it too.

“We see, year after year, the forest retreating and turn into this ghost forest,” says the refuge’s Toner, a biologist by training. “We’re trying to keep what we have here for as long as we can.”

Help’s on the way. Much of the $27.5 million will be spent restoring fragile coastal ecosystems via shoreline protection and peatland restoration. IRA money could plug drainage ditches and add dikes, tidal gates, or wooden risers to keep saltwater at bay while restoring the natural flow of water over the land. Culverts may be dug to let water flow beneath roads. Restoration, or preservation, of trees, shrubs, and wetlands could provide habitat for Red Wolves, black rails, and other migratory birds. Communities near and far will likely benefit from a reduction in wildfires and a sequestration of carbon.

Oyster reefs, for example, could be built, or expanded, at Cedar Island and Pea Island refuges. A canal might be dredged, and a pump station added, at Lake Mattamuskeet. A logging road could be removed at Roanoke River refuge to let water flow naturally again. The marsh sill at the Bell Island Pier could be expanded.

Work is set to begin in 2024. Baillie, with the nonprofit Coastal Federation, says there’s no time to waste.

“It would be really disingenuous to say, ‘Hey, these funds are going to take care of all of our problems and let people live the way they currently do forever,’” he says. “There are tough decisions to be made. But these funds can have a big impact helping people and natural communities adapt while buying some time to figure out what’s the best way forward.”

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A ruddy turnstone secures a snack recently at the surf’s edge near Oceanana Pier in Atlantic Beach. These sandpipers have a varied diet that includes crabs, mollusks, worms, sea urchins and small fish, according to the National Audubon Society. They nest in the North American and Eurasian arctic and winter along the coastlines of six continents. Contributed photo: Nicholas Green

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A pelican stretches while perched upon a pylon in Core Sound near the Down East village of Atlantic. Photo: Dylan Ray

NAGS HEAD — Standing Wednesday at the end of a short path lined with beautyberries and seaside goldenrod at Jockey’s Ridge State Park, North Carolina First Lady Kristin Cooper told a gathering of about two dozen that, although she was here to celebrate North Carolina Native Plant Week, Oct. 16 to 22, it wasn’t plants that first drew her attention — it was her fascination with birds.

And because native plant species are so vital for North Carolina’s birds and pollinators, Cooper has been a vocal advocate for planting native species of trees, flowers and vegetation almost from the time her husband Gov. Roy Cooper took office in 2017.

Birds, she explained, began to thrive and increase in numbers at the North Carolina Executive Mansion soon after a project that stripped away dozens of nonnative ornamentals that had choked out other species in the garden there and replaced them with native plants.

“We put it (a native plant garden) in October, and the next spring, we had the kids come out and do a bird count,” she said. “Then a couple of years later they came back … and we saw a 25% uptick in the variety of birds that we saw — just in those two years.”

In July, the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources instituted a policy that required all landscaping and planting at state parks, including Jockey’s Ridge, historic sites and other facilities the department manages to use only native plants in their landscaping.

“This is government trying to lead by example, by doing this, we’re trying to encourage businesses, homeowners, homeowners associations, other government agencies to embrace native plants as well,” said Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Secretary Reid Wilson, who, along with Audubon North Carolina Executive Director Curtis Smalling, were at the event.

The project at the mansion had sprung from a conversation Cooper had with folks with Audubon North Carolina when her husband was still the state attorney general.

“I’ve got to give a lot of the glory to the Audubon Society,” she said. “Some very astute person must have been at some place hearing me talk about how much I like birds.”

Cooper wasn’t here just to talk about plants. She also joined in planting a persimmon tree by the visitor center at the state park. Persimmon trees are abundant among the dunes and maritime trees of Jockey’s Ridge. The trees are a magnet for wildlife with innumerable birds and mammals gathering at the trees when the fruit ripens.

After the event, Cooper told Coastal Review why she is so passionate about native plants.

“Birds, even hummingbirds, mostly what they eat are bugs,” she said.

And while birds do eat seeds, insects make up the bulk of their diet, she noted. “A native oak tree might have 250 insects they can eat. A crepe myrtle maybe has two.”

It’s not just birds that thrive among native plants.

“I had a problem with a rabbit just eating my native plant, and that’s the point — they won’t eat that (other) stuff. They just hop right through it (nonnative plants) and come over and eat the plants you want there,” she said.

Wilson, during his remarks, also extolled the virtues of native plants.

“They are part of our natural and cultural heritage,” he said. “They are better able to survive and thrive because they’re adapted to our weather and to our soils.”

Smalling, with Audubon North Carolina, said the organization had begun the initiative 10 years ago as a collaborative effort among a group of volunteers including state park staff, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, aid groups and others. It was Cooper’s advocacy, however, that really moved the idea forward.

“One of the significant things that happened early in the process was First Lady Cooper stepped up and really became an important partner for us. Elevating the role of native plants and what they do for birds was really critical to understanding the connection,” Smalling said.

But a big issue that could hurt the campaign to get more native plants in the ground is nurseries’ inventories.

“Now that we want everybody to be planting native plants, we’ve got to make sure they’re available,” he said.

Smalling told Coastal Review that 2014 had been the first year that Audubon North Carolina began the native plants push. He said that initial effort illustrated what can happen when an idea gets too far ahead of inventory.

“The first year we did this, we said everybody needs to plant a spicebush because it’s great for migratory birds,” Smalling said. “Immediately, everybody was sold out of spicebush. We created the statewide shortage.”

Audubon North Carolina has subsequently developed a short list of six or seven plants it recommends each year so that nurseries can plan accordingly. Nonetheless, there are still supply chain issues, but now, Smalling noted, to the state’s native plant initiative is critical to making native plants more available.

“That’s why the policy that Secretary Wilson was talking about is really important. If you can drive that demand, as long as the growers see that there’s built-in demand, they can start ramping up,” he said.

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A blue heron hunts in the marsh grass near Conch’s Point on Calico Creek in Morehead City. Photo: Dylan Ray

Organizers of the annual Wings Over Water Festival set for Oct. 17-22 and Dec. 8-10 are celebrating the event’s 25th anniversary this year, with dawn-to-dusk bird counts, birding in otherwise restricted refuge areas, art, history, hikes and paddles.

The festival takes place at six national wildlife refuges that together cover parts of six northeast North Carolina counties and is the annual fundraiser for the Coastal Wildlife Refuge Society. The society, a nonprofit that supports regional national wildlife refuges, provides educational grants, volunteers and staff who are essential to national wildlife refuges and their visitor centers and support projects such as trail maintenance.

Author and artist Julie Zickefoose, keynote speaker for the 2019 festival, returns this year as keynote speaker. Her books include “Letters From Eden” and “The Bluebird Effect.” She is a contributing editor to Bird Watcher’s Digest.

Zickefoose leads natural history excursions to Latin America and Africa lives on an 80-acre wildlife sanctuary in Appalachian Ohio.

Her talk, “Baby Birds: An Artist Looks Into The Nest,” which is also the title of her 2016 book, examines why and how baby songbirds develop so quickly, with some launching into flight only 11 days after hatching. The keynote reception is set for 6-8 p.m. Oct. 21 at the National Wildlife Refuges Gateway Visitor Center, 100 Conservation Way, Manteo.

Online registration has opened for the festival launched in 1997 to better connect people with the wildlife and wild lands and a schedule of events is available for download.

Organizers advised that when registering for Wings Over Water Encore events, note that the trip dates are in December.

HATTERAS – Researcher and island resident Kate Sutherland’s work studying the chemical isotopes of the feathers from black-capped petrels may lead to better understanding of the foraging habits — if not the varied physical appearance — of this difficult-to-study, endangered Gulf Stream bird species.

Sutherland is set to present her findings in October at a joint Waterbird Society and Atlantic Marine Bird Cooperative conference in Florida.

“That’s exciting,” she said. “It’ll be my first time to get to go to a conference and present something that I’ve done.”

Black-capped petrels, or Pterodroma hasitata, are pelagic birds, a species that lives most of its life in the open waters of the oceans — the pelagic zone — returning to land only long enough to reproduce.

There are numerous challenges in studying black-capped petrels. The open ocean that is their habitat is part of the difficulty in field research. Equally daunting is the mountainous terrain of the island of Hispaniola where they are known to nest. Compounding the challenge, they are burrowing nesters, and their nests can be difficult to find or identify.

They are one species of a wide variety of pelagic birds, and are one of the most endangered. At one time they were numerous throughout the Caribbean, but extensive hunting in the 18th and 19th centuries and, more recently, loss of habitat have diminished the population. At one time it was thought the species was extinct.

In 1961, ornithologist David Wingate found nesting sites in Haiti. To date, the only known nesting sites for black-capped petrels is on Hispaniola, although there may be other sites in mountainous regions of the Caribbean islands. There are an estimated 600 to 2,000 breeding pairs remaining, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

Sutherland has made black-capped petrels her focus, but pelagic birds in general have caught her imagination.

“They are like little superheroes. They live in this environment that is so foreign to us. You go out there on a boat. People are seasick and holding on and it’s really rough. And they’re just totally at home,” Sutherland said.

The black-capped petrel, though, is special to her.

“From the beginning I have been interested in all of the seabirds we see offshore, but the black-capped petrel is specific to this area, the Gulf Stream, and our offshore environment, so they are our signature species,” she said.

As a species, black-capped petrels have characteristics that set them apart.

“It’s the order Procellariiformes, the tube-nose seabirds,” Sutherland explained. “They have these tubular structures on top of their bill (that are) their own little desalinization plants. They need fresh water, they drink saltwater, they excrete this briny thick solution from those structures on their bill.”

The tube nose has another function as well.

“They also focus the scent molecules on their olfactory bulb, which is quite large. They have a highly developed sense of smell. It’s pretty amazing. That’s how a lot of times they find their food,” she said.

The first trip to the Gulf Stream was more than 20 years ago, and it was not a meticulously planned adventure. She and a friend from birding class at the western Virginia community college where she earned her associate’s degree in wildlife management were looking for something different to do and a pelagic birding trip was recommended.

“We came down here in 2000 for a winter trip, and it was weathered out,” Sutherland recalled. “So we went the next day, and she (the friend) was sick all day. And I was in the wheelhouse all day. They were keeping the numbers and the data and transect information, identifying all these birds and I was hooked.”

That was with charter boat Capt. Brian Patteson, who is now the captain of the Stormy Petrel II. At 61 feet long, it is a large, powerful craft. Sutherland still works with Patteson and is still keeping records.

She commuted that first year from Virginia to Hatteras Village, the Stormy Petrel’s homeport. A year later she moved to Hatteras Island.

It took her a while, but in 2015 she enrolled at University of North Carolina Wilmington, graduating in 2019 with her bachelor’s in marine biology, but as COVID-19 took hold, Sutherland reassessed what she was going to do with her degree.

“I had a bunch of work lined up on research vessels, which is kind of what I thought I wanted to do at the time. And then COVID happened. Everything was canceled,” she said.

Instead, she enrolled as a graduate student at the UNCW Department of Biology and Marine Biology, working with Dr. Steven Emslie as her adviser. The project she proposed was to analyze black-capped petrel feathers of specimens housed at the North Carolina State Museum of Natural History. The samples had been gathered by the late David Lee, who had been curator of birds at the museum.

Lee died in 2014.

Sutherland proposed analyzing isotopes of nitrogen, sulfur and carbon found in the specimens that could be used to profile the birds’ diets to see if what they were eating could account for color differences in the species.

A characteristic of black-capped petrels is the color variations among different birds.

“Two variations of Black-capped Petrel occur, a light form and a dark form, with some individuals displaying intermediate characteristics between the two,” she wrote in the introduction to her master’s thesis.

Where or why the variations occur is not understood. At present, the few nesting burrows that have been identified are exclusively dark or intermediate-colored birds.

“Burrows hosting light-form birds have yet to be discovered,” she wrote.

Sutherland had proposed that an analysis of the bird’s diet might explain the color differences, but that was not supported by the data.

“This study did not show any statistical differences … among the color forms in Black-capped Petrels,” she wrote in her conclusion.

But the study did suggest that male and female black-capped petrels forage for food in different parts of the Gulf Stream, and that the chemical analysis of the samples “… enhances our interpretation of foraging areas with females feeding in areas with prey having generally higher (sulphur) values, but lower (carbon) values, possibly due to using areas farther offshore than the males.”

Although she did not find the differentiation in diet she had suggested might exist between light and dark black-capped petrels, her work is nonetheless significant, Emslie, Sutherland’s adviser, noted.

“Overall, Kate has provided important baseline data that can help direct future studies of this and other seabird species for which we know little about their diet and foraging behavior,” he wrote in an email.

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. 

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Boats dot the Carteret County waters of, from left, Gallants Channel, Taylors Creek and Bulkhead Channel Thursday, with, in the foreground, Pivers Island, home to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Beaufort Laboratory and the Duke University Marine Lab; Front Street in Beaufort at top left; the Rachel Carson Reserve, center-left; Shackleford Banks, top-center and part of the Cape Lookout National Seashore; and the Atlantic Ocean beyond. Photo: Dylan Ray

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An osprey takes flight, leaving chicks in a nest on a leaning piling above the waters of Midden Creek near Tusk in Down East Carteret County. Photo: Dylan Ray

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A lone Ibis hunts near a ridge of oysters near low tide on a recent morning in Marshallberg. Photo: Dylan Ray

When bird expert Brian O’Shea travels for field work, he heads to northeast South America, taking a similar route as the long-distance migratory shorebirds he studies.

O’Shea, who has been the ornithology collection manager for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences since 2011, heads to Guyana or Suriname three or four times a year for various projects, including documenting major shorebird concentration points.

He said there is a “massive effort” to study the diverse group of shorebirds that migrate between the Arctic and Guiana Shield, the region between the mouths of the Orinoco and Amazon rivers.

Most shorebirds are extreme long-distance migrants. After spending four to six weeks in the Arctic during the summer to breed, “they fly extraordinary distances, sometimes nonstop, across patches of ocean that take them several days to cross.”

There’s been quite a bit of tracking work on shorebirds, especially on larger species, and a lot of those birds move up and down the coast.

Of the 30 or so shorebird species that come through North Carolina, “I would say roughly 20 of those species are regularly along the coast of the Guianas as well,” O’Shea said.

His work studying these shorebirds in South America helps us better understand the behaviors of and threats to the same birds we see on the North Carolina coast.

Worldwide, shorebirds have declined quite a bit, at least 40% with the long-distance migrants, he said, adding those found along the coast of the Guianas having declined more than most.

“By most accounts, the populations of certain shorebirds from the coast of the Guianas are down roughly 80% from where they were 40 years ago. They are declining very rapidly and there’s a lot of interest in identifying key habitat and taking whatever conservation measures we can to help protect them,” O’Shea continued.

“The network of people that is working on this problem and studying shorebirds basically encompasses the entire Western Hemisphere because the birds just travel so much. So, it’s a massive effort involving multiple agencies.”

O’Shea found himself in Guyana in 2000 as the resident ornithologist for the Smithsonian program, Biological Diversity of the Guiana Shield, after graduating from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, in 1998 with a bachelor’s in biology. He earned his doctorate in biological sciences in 2009 from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he learned how to care for specimens in a museum setting, before joining the Raleigh museum to oversee the ornithology collection.

“I am sort of the guardian of the collection of about 27,000 bird specimens,” he said of the collection that has been growing since about 1879.

The collection contains thousands of seabird specimens including skins, skeletons, fluid-preserved birds, several thousand egg sets, about 1,000 voice recordings of North Carolina birds and two rare specimens, the Carolina parakeet and the passenger pigeon, both extinct, according to the website.

The coast of the Guianas has, historically, been a major stopover for shorebirds flying north across the Atlantic to get to North America, or flying south from New England or the coast of the Carolinas, O’Shea said.

“These birds are, right now, subject to a lot of different pressures all around,” he added. In addition to climate change and pollution, there’s coastal development. These “cascading ecosystem effects” can impact shorebirds disproportionately because of the rather narrow zones that they inhabit along the edges of the continents and on the islands, particularly causing fluctuations in prey abundance.

One issue in Guyana he has been working on is shorebird hunting. Many of the shorebirds are protected while in the United States, but when they leave North America, they leave all the protection that they have here and fly to places where there is very little in the way of protection, he explained.

There has been shorebird hunting in Guyana and throughout the Caribbean, for some time. In places like Barbados, there are shooting swamps, for example, which are areas where shorebirds tend to stop and people go there to shoot the birds, often for sport.

In Guyana, the hunting method is a little different and “is pretty brutal,” O’Shea said. The hunter will whip a wire back and forth to maim or kill shorebirds flying across mudflats.

Shorebird is considered a luxury food item and the hunter will sell the meat to a market or eat it themselves. “And there’s no regulation whatsoever. It’s not even really on the radar of wildlife management in a place like Guyana,” he said.

O’Shea has been working with a grassroots organization, Guyana Marine Conservation Society, on education and outreach about hunting shorebirds with the hope to get laws implemented that will at least establish limits on harvest.

Another concern is an oil-related disaster. While Guyana has historically been one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, a few years ago oil was found off the coast and that’s completely transforming the economy, he said.

“There’s been a lot of concern, not only with sea level rise because 90% of the population lives right along the coast, but also because of the potential for pollution related to the oil development,” he said. “There’s a lot of attention being drawn to the coast now, and shorebirds are just a part of that. You can imagine if there were an oil-related disaster there that it would impact these shorebird staging areas, which are so vital.”

When he’s in the U.S., he’s caring for the thousands of specimens making up the ornithology collection in the museum.

The museum has a long legacy of coastal specimen collection, including the sizable seabird collection started by Dave Lee, who was at the museum from 1975 to 2003, O’Shea said. Lee was a very passionate naturalist who collected the large numbers of seabirds off the coast of the Outer Banks, and “helped document a lot of the birds that we know are out there today at a time when nobody else is really doing it.”

The museum also has the largest specimen series of the black-capped petrel, a bird that breeds mainly on Hispaniola and is now listed as endangered. The bird is quite common off the Outer Banks. “I believe we have 66 of them. And that’s more than any other museum in the world,” he said.

Rehabilitation centers on the coast like Outer Banks Wildlife Shelter in Carteret County and Sea Biscuit Wildlife Shelter in Oak Island contribute to the state’s specimen collection, too.

“When they get birds that don’t survive, they come to us and then we either work to prepare them ourselves and put them in our collection, or we send them to other museums around the country,” he said. “I am doing this to make sure the birds are preserved. We’re establishing long-term documentation of what’s going on in the oceans with these specimens.”

He explained that scientists have used the specimens for a variety of research, from studying the accumulation of plastics in seabirds’ stomachs, to determining where these birds breeding, to tracking ocean pollution by sampling bird feathers from 40 to 50 years ago compared to now. And there’s “a lot of other things that we don’t even know we can do yet. We’re just putting birds away and at some point down the road when the technology catches up the shorebirds will be there.”

Cape Fear Audubon needs your help in putting more eyes on the skies.

North America’s bird populations have dramatically declined over the past half-century, according to several studies.

Cape Fear Audubon is seeking volunteers to record field observations for the North Carolina Bird Atlas, a statewide project that focuses on the distribution and numbers of species from the coast to the mountains.

The organization is hosting a special public event 7-8 p.m. March 14 at the Halyburton Park Event Center, 4099 S. 17^th St., Wilmington, to discuss the decline in bird populations.

State Wildlife Resources Commission officials John Carpenter, a wildlife diversity biologist, and Elsa Chen, a biological technician, will discuss at the meeting how volunteers can help document sightings and plug that information into eBird, a smart-phone application.

“This is a crowd-sourcing approach, where volunteers sign up to survey specific geographical blocks,” Cape Fear Audubon Vice President Marae West said in a press release. “It’s a great opportunity for people to have fun observing birds, while contributing to a better understanding of what’s needed to protect them.”

Researchers have concluded that North America’s bird population has 3 billion fewer birds than it did in 1970, according to a 2019 report in Science. The decline is the equivalent to a loss of about one in four birds.

Bird atlases have been conducted in the United States since the 1970s, but the North Carolina Bird Atlas did not begin until 2021. Data for the atlas is collected every 5 years.

Volunteers may choose from several survey blocks in Cape Fear Audubon’s survey area.

Audubon is also hosting Atlas-focused field outings. More information about those outings are available at capefearaudubon.org  

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A great blue heron takes flight from an oyster bed at low tide near Russell Creek in Carteret County. These large birds, often called cranes, walk and beat their wings slowly and can be found near all kinds of waters all over North America, according to the Audubon Field Guide. Photo: Dylan Ray

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A tricolored heron watches motionless for prey in the water at Roanoke Island Marshes Dedicated Nature Preserve in Wanchese. Photo: Kip Tabb

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Flocks of pelican and cormorant chase a bait ball of fish along the shoreline of Atlantic in Down East Carteret County. Photo: Dylan Ray

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A wedge of egrets hunts shrimp in the salt marsh along the Newport River in Mill Creek in Carteret County. Photo: Dylan Ray

From a North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission press release.

Officials from North Carolina natural resources and public health agencies remind waterfowl hunters to be observant and careful when handling wild birds during hunting season.

Officials announced Friday that although no new highly pathogenic avian influenza, HPAI, infections in wild birds had been documented in North Carolina since March, those birds that migrated to other states and Canada during the spring and summer, where HPAI was present, are returning to North Carolina for the winter.

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission reported in March that some asymptomatic, hunter-harvested waterfowl had tested positive for HPAI, and some mortalities in symptomatic, wild birds had been identified. Wild bird mortalities can occur with HPAI, particularly in species of raptors that prey on waterfowl and in avian scavengers that feed on infected carcasses.

The risk of human infection is low, but rare instances have occurred due to direct interaction with diseased birds. Health officials with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services offered the following recommendations to prevent potential disease spread while hunting:

• Refrain from harvesting or handling wild birds that are obviously sick.
• Wash your hands with soap and water after handling game or use an alcohol-based sanitizer if soap and water are not available.
• Dress game birds in the field whenever possible, wear disposable gloves and wash hands afterwards.

DHHS health officials also suggest that hunters seek medical care if they experience flu-like symptoms after having close contact with a potentially infected bird, and to get a seasonal flu vaccine every year. While seasonal flu vaccination will not prevent infection with bird flu viruses, getting vaccinated can reduce the risk of getting sick with both human and bird flu viruses at the same time.

Proactive behavior is particularly important because wild birds typically do not exhibit signs of HPAI. The U.S. Department of Agriculture provides additional information on HPAI and prevention guidance.

Songbirds present a low risk for HPAI transmission to other birds, however, if you own poultry, it is not recommended to maintain bird feeders or bird baths. Congregating wild birds, which happens at bird feeders and baths, increases the chance of disease transmission to domestic poultry.

“We are interested hearing about morbidity events involving five or more waterbirds or waterfowl, any number of raptors or avian scavengers, like vultures, or any of those species that are observed with clinical signs consistent with neurological impairment, like swimming in circles, head tilt and lack of coordination,” stated Sarah Van de Berg, wildlife biologist with the Wildlife Commission.

The public is encouraged to report wild bird behavior as described by Van de Berg to the NC Wildlife Helpline at 866-318-2401, Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m., or email HWI@ncwildlife.org.

All bird mortalities attributed to HPAI or birds otherwise testing positive are being tracked by the USDA. Check here for an up-to-date listing.

This time of year, the only sounds greeting the sunrise over Lake Mattamuskeet are the soft plop of a fish landing back in the water after a jump and the rustle of wind pushing the grasses lining the shore. Just the spiders and tree silhouettes are visible at this hour of grayness.

As the sun breaks the horizon, a few hidden birds vocalize their presence. Shortly after sunrise, fishermen arrive and begin casting lines into the dark water.

Lake Mattamuskeet covers about 40,000 acres, making it North Carolina’s largest natural lake and a commanding presence in mainland Hyde County.

“It’s the second largest natural lake east of the Mississippi (River),” said Kelly Davis, who was the longtime biologist for Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge.

In the eastern U.S., excluding the Great Lakes, only Lake Okeechobee in Florida is bigger.

In the winter, the stillness disperses as the lake attracts about 240 species of raucous birds, many of which stop to rest there on their migrations. But some are also year-round residents, Davis said.

And she would know. As the refuge biologist, she managed the waterfowl impoundments around the western, southern and eastern sides of the lake.

The refuge includes the lake plus an additional 10,000 acres of surrounding land — the impoundments; a visitor center with mounted local mammals and birds, along with interactive exhibits and a gift shop; and the headquarters for the Mattamuskeet refuge, which also includes Swan Quarter and Cedar Island refuges.

The impoundments are a habitat managed specifically for wildlife, with native grasses, reeds and hedges grown for waterfowl consumption.

“You can manipulate the water levels in the impoundments, and by doing so — during the growing season particularly — you can influence the types of plants that germinate,” Davis said, adding she evaluated the impoundments and wrote an annual management plan for them.

Like any other wetlands, they try to go through natural succession and get “woody” with time, changing from just grasses to include more cattails, wax myrtles or red maples. Setting back this succession to maintain the wetlands means setting units on fire every four to eight years.

“You really want to set the table and have a smorgasbord ready for when thousands and thousands of migratory ducks, geese and swans show up ready to eat,” she said.

Birdwatchers flock there in winter, utilizing the wildlife viewing areas on Wildlife Drive, the nature trails and the two photo blinds on Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge for observation and photography.

The biggest migratory waterfowl is the tundra swan, which nests in Alaska and Canada and comes to Mattamuskeet and Pea Island refuges for the winter.

Duck species include the northern pintail, the green-winged teal, gadwall, ring-necked and wood ducks. There are both resident and migratory Canada geese, of which the latter return to nest near the Hudson Bay in Canada, Davis said. People might see snow geese from the Arctic; warblers from Central and South America; wading birds — some of which are migratory and some of which are not; and raptors.

“Our raptor population always picks up a little bit in the fall and winter,” she said, because they prey on the other birds that arrive. Raptors include the northern harrier, red-tailed hawk, bald eagle and osprey, plus several owl species.

In her work, Davis completed an annual vegetation survey for the lake, conducted aerial surveys of waterfowl in the fall and winter, did alligator surveys, banded “a lot of waterfowl” and counted shorebirds and waterbirds. Osprey production surveys consisted of climbing up into the nests and banding ospreys, she noted.

“When you work on a refuge, you do management, you do biology, you do public use, you do it all,” Davis stated. “National wildlife refuges are wonderful places to live and work. Our property adjoins Mattamuskeet refuge in a few places. The lake and refuge are great neighbors.”

Multiple theories abound as to how the expansive body of water formed, the most popular of which include a fire burning deep in the peat and a meteor strike. “We know Mother Nature created it,” Davis noted. “It’s not a human-made lake.”

Researchers from the University of North Carolina took core samples of the lake sediment not quite 20 years ago and found an ash layer in places, Davis recalled. That would suggest a fire occurred, “whether it was a peat forest or meteorite” that burned.

Mac Gibbs, the former Hyde County director with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension, said no proof of a meteorite strike had been found. His opinion? “I really think it’s from the fire that burned the peat soils down to the poor mineral soil.”

It’s not hard to imagine, as even today, the area is prone to massive fires that sometimes burn deep into the peat — organic matter within the soil. In 2008, the Evan Roads Wildfire burned more than 40,000 acres and “burned down 2 and 3 feet in the soil,” Gibbs said.

The fire theory also lines up with area Algonquian tribes’ oral tradition, which maintains a fire caused the depression that filled with rainwater, forming the lake. It was the Native Americans who named the area Mattamuskeet, meaning “dry dust.”

No rivers, springs or other waterways feed the lake, so its water did come from rain, runoff, groundwater, a receding ocean or a combination of those.

Gibbs said the lake’s average depth was historically about 4 feet, “so it’s a very shallow lake.” He estimates the current average depth around closer to 6 or 7 feet because of sea level rise and other contributing factors.

Much of the lake’s base is organic, although some parts are sandy and some parts are clay. “The northwest side of the lake has sections that have very peaty bottoms,” Davis said.

Sandy soils in places suggest the area was at one time a beach. Geologists maintain that about 75,000 years ago, “that’s where the sea level was,” Gibbs said of the lake area. The ocean began receding and did so until about 14,000 years ago, at which time it reversed course and started rising.

“Fourteen thousand years ago, the sea level was about 200 feet below where it is today,” he said.

Rivers provided drainage from the mountains and Piedmont area, depositing rich topsoil in the area around the lake, which functioned as a delta “just like the Mississippi Delta,” Gibbs described.

“We’ve got some of the richest farmland in the United States, we can grow crops that rival the Midwest,” he said.

For that reason, developers tried to drain and sell land throughout northeastern North Carolina, from the Great Dismal Swamp to Lake Phelps and Lake Mattamuskeet. “It’s been a history of the whole area,” Gibbs said, noting that enslaved people were forced to dig the canals to drain the land.

Developers later succeeded in fully draining the lake several times in the early 1900s and tried to sell it off as farmland — a plan that never came to fruition. “I think mosquitoes had as much to do with it as anything” Gibbs opined. “It was a disappointment at that point in time; it just didn’t work.”

According to a 2016 Our State article by Bryan Mims, the cost of keeping water out of the lake via miles of canals and the three-story pumping station was also prohibitive.

The pumping station was built in 1915 as the world’s largest.

The U.S. government acquired the lake, dedicating it as a wildlife refuge in 1934, and the pumping station was converted to a hunting lodge until 1974. The former pumping station has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980 and is now state property.

“Hunting is a big part of Hyde County’s economy,” Davis said, noting that duck hunting and bear hunting are popular, and most hunters pay to hunt on private property.

The refuge runs a small waterfowl hunt near its headquarters, managed on an automated lottery system people can enter for a two-day hunt in December or January, Davis said. The hunt takes place on a 4-mile strip of shoreline that has 16 hunt blinds, including one Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant hunt blind. Hunting is prohibited in the refuge outside of the specified time frame for those lottery winners.

Bank fishing and crabbing are permitted year-round from N.C. 94 and in a few other places on the refuge, while most other fishing is limited from March to October.

Eugene Grays was bank fishing soon after sunrise on a late-September day. He placed one small, round, silvery menhaden fish onto his hook from a bucket of the live bait fish that he’d caught earlier. A rockfish had just broken his line by swimming under the culvert below N.C. 94, which runs north to south across the lake.

“He was a whopper,” Grays lamented the loss of the rockfish. He and his older brother Theotis Grays caught white perch and crabs another day and were currently fishing for white perch and rockfish.

The brothers grew up in Fairfield, the town directly north of the lake. Their father taught them to catch, clean and cook fish, and Eugene Grays recalled coming to the lake as young boys and taking home for lunch whatever they had caught.

He currently lives in Maryland, having moved there to work for the government, but he’s now retired and visits home as often as possible.

“I come home to go fishing,” he said. “There’s nothing like home fishing.”

Many others are similarly drawn to the lake to fish and catch the renowned, massive lake crabs.

“Out-of-towners come all the time,” he said, listing Elizabeth City, Wilson and Raleigh as some of the places from which people come. “They eat everything they catch.”

Allie Best never thought about studying birds while pursuing an undergraduate degree at a liberal arts college nestled on the banks of the Hudson River in New York.

By her senior year at Marist College, she knew she wanted to continue her studies and earn a master’s degree. And, she was really interested in conservation.

When she started making the rounds, reaching out to a number of professors at graduate schools she was eyeing to mark the next chapter in her academic pursuits, Best ended up having a conversation with an assistant professor at a university that she credits her parents for putting on her radar.

“Really it was a stroke of luck,” Best said in a recent telephone interview.

Ray Danner, an assistant professor of biology and marine biology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, had what he thought would be a research project that would work well for Best.

“We talked about how I had never worked with birds before, but I just really enjoy wildlife and I told him I could see myself enjoying this, but I have never really thought about studying birds,” Best said.

That conversation fueled Best to make her way from Poughkeepsie, New York, south to Wilmington, where she immersed herself in a lab and in the field, catching and tagging birds. She recently wrapped up a 14-week field research project monitoring least terns with fellow students and Danner on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

“It was amazing,” she said. “I paid attention to (birds) before just as someone enjoying nature and then really being able to understand more about them just opened my eyes to this whole new world of ornithology and I really, really enjoyed it.”

As Best enters her second year of graduate school later this month she does so with the distinction of being one of two recipients of the North Carolina Space Grant and North Carolina Sea Grant, a fellowship awarded to students whose research explores challenges facing the state’s coast.

Best was awarded the $10,000 grant to study the shrinking habitat of coastal plain swamp sparrows, palm-sized birds that breed in coastal marshes primarily from New Jersey south to Delaware and Maryland.

In 2007, scientists discovered that these tiny birds winter on the southeast Atlantic Coast between North Carolina and South Carolina.

Hyde County, the area of focus for Best’s research, is the center of the coastal plain swamp sparrows’ wintering range.

“This subspecies is going to be getting a lot of attention in the near future, I believe, from conservation organizations,” Danner said. “They’re declining and they’re one of these species that has small population size, small range to start with and very specialized habitat.”

Best will use a combination of technology and data from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to forecast the effects of sea level rise and create models of those projected impacts of the birds’ habitat.

Coastal plain swamp sparrows prefer high marsh habitat, which is less adaptive to sea level rise because, unlike low marsh habitat, it does not flood with high tide and become exposed at low tide.

“I think it’s really important to understand how different sea level rise scenarios are going to affect these species in order to inform management decisions,” Best said. “To be clear, all marsh species are at a major threat here.”

In 2003, the United States Geological Survey recommended the coastal plain swamp sparrow be listed as a subspecies of concern by state and local governments because of its small population size and habitat.

Danner describe Bests’ research project as one where she will develop an intimate understanding of the birds’ habitat needs.

“You can imagine us attaching little radio transmitters to birds and following them around,” he said. “Now she’s analyzing those data to figure out where the birds go, what sorts of plants they use, what sorts of habitats they’re in. She uses satellite imagery to describe the habitat where the birds are found.”

Best, former captain of UNCW women’s basketball team, will use imagery to describe how much habitat exists in a region, then apply sea level rise models to that region to determine how much of that habitat will exist in the future.

“Marsh habitat’s being lost from a lot of different causes from developments and sea level rise and I think a lot of us are at the point where we see sea level rise is happening, there’s no disputing that anymore,” Danner said. Now it’s time to start making smart plans about adaptation. That’s really what Allie’s work focuses on. She’s not going to stop sea level rise. We’re just trying to help conservation managers decide how that we can adapt to it.”

The Wildlife Resources Commission announced Tuesday that the 40^th and final edition of the waterfowl print and stamp is available online at the N.C. Wild Store while supplies last.

The artwork features a pair of wood ducks painted by the award-winning artist, Ron Louque. The commission said Louque had won a record of 31 conservation stamp contests and reached the pinnacle of his career when he won the 2002 Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest for the 2003 Federal Duck Stamp. Officials said his accolades and conservation-minded artistic talents made him the ideal artist for this year’s milestone print.

The North Carolina Waterfowl Conservation Stamp and Print program was established in 1983 by the Wildlife Commission and generated some supplemental revenue for waterfowl conservation in the state, including acquiring and improving habitat. However, with more and more license and permit purchases being made online, collector interest in the prints has declined, and last year, the Wildlife Resources Commission decided to end the stamp program and the annual prints. The commission said other state wildlife agencies had made similar decisions.

The print and stamp prices are priced as follows:

• Waterfowl Conservation Print: $135 plus tax.
• Waterfowl Conservation Mint Stamp: $14 plus tax.
• Waterfowl Conservation Adhesive Stamp: $14 plus tax.

View dimensions and purchase the print and stamp at NCWildstore.com.

Featured Image

An endangered red-cockaded woodpecker flies in to his nesting cavity with a spider in in his beak for the awaiting chicks inside. Red-cockaded woodpeckers are an endemic species of the longleaf pine forest and were placed on the endangered species list due to the destruction of nesting habitat. Longleaf pine forests once covered an area the size of the Amazon across the southeastern United States. But today, less than 10% of this forest remains. Photo: Jared Lloyd

Featured Image

A trio of great crested flycatchers gather momentarily Saturday in a tree at Sandy Run Park in Kitty Hawk. According to the Audubon Guide to North American Birds, flycatchers are more often heard — especially the males’ loud calls — than seen, as they prefer wooded areas. Photo: Kip Tabb

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. 

Guest commentary

From Lea-Hutaff Island to the south end of Wrightsville Beach, birds are returning to nest at our inlets and beaches. Brown pelicans are already patrolling the waves and marshes to feed their young. Black skimmers and least terns are raising chicks right on the sand, to the delight of beachgoers and vacationers. 

Birds have safe places to rear their young on our coast thanks to years of teamwork by conservation organizations, volunteers, state agencies, and local governments. A new bipartisan bill in Congress offers an opportunity to build on this work by protecting our beach towns and important coastal habitats at the same time. 

The Shoreline Health Oversight, Restoration, Resilience, and Enhancement Act, or SHORRE Act — which is backed by Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate — would preserve coastal habitat while providing affordable, alternative sand sources used for beach nourishment projects. Under the bill, local governments would be able to seek federal support for any added costs of dredging and sourcing sand outside of sensitive coastal areas. It’s a win-win: Communities get sand for beach renourishment projects while protecting the habitats that birds and people depend on.  

For decades, pristine beaches, marshes, and inlets up and down North Carolina’s coast have been protected from development by the Coastal Barrier Resources Act (CBRA). Signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1982, the program prohibits development and federal infrastructure spending in certain designated areas. 

The result has been a generation of conservation that continues to make our coast a top-tier destination, from world-class fishing to open stretches of untouched beach to the abundant wildlife we all enjoy. The new bill would build on CBRA to support beach towns and ensure habitats are conserved.  

That means enduring protections for the places that serve as nurseries for marine life, including important commercial and recreational fish species. In North Carolina, the commercial saltwater fishing industry brings in $78 million per year. 

It also means enduring protections for rare bird habitat, from undeveloped stretches of open sand home to vulnerable beach-nesting birds like least terns, to inlets that provide safe places for plovers, skimmers, and oystercatchers to raise their young. Sand mining in inlets and other nearshore areas can harm habitats that are vital to shorebirds and waterbirds, with damage to the food chain persisting for months to several years. 

Undeveloped inlets, islands, beaches and wetlands in the CBRA program also help protect upland communities from storms and erosion. A 2021 federal report found that sand mining in inlets, like those protected by the CBRA system, can harm downdrift communities, increasing their erosion and exposing them to greater storm hazards. 

Closer to home, this compromise bill will help ensure CBRA areas like Masonboro Island remain a beloved destination for families and wildlife for years to come. 

The SHORRE Act is a strong example of how we can continue the work of protecting the environment and supporting coastal communities at the same time. Audubon North Carolina supports the balance that it presents, and urges North Carolina’s Congressional delegation to vote in favor of it. 

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. See our guidelines for submitting guest columns. Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

FERRY SLIP ISLAND – It’s not much to look at.

This island mound rises up from the Cape Fear River like a misshaped pancake — rounded and flat along one edge, fluffy and jagged on the other.

There are no trees or shrubs. A handful of small patches of grass break through the caramel-colored sand. More desert than oasis.

Alas, appearances can be deceiving.

This island is one of only two nesting spots along North Carolina’s southern coast for royal terns and sandwich terns and — good news for the terns — it recently received its first fresh batch of sand in 18 years.

In all, 80,000 cubic yards of sand was scooped from a shoaled-in area in the nearby shipping channel and pumped onto the island.

“It has taken many years for the channel to need dredging in that area so, finally, the stars have aligned, and we were able to receive the sand,” said Lindsay Addison, Audubon North Carolina coastal biologist. “It’s close to beach quality sand on the island. That means the birds are going to get improved habitat. There’s about six sites in this state where these species nest, so that’s not a lot of sites and so it’s really important that they’ve got these islands to nest on.”

Ferry Slip Island, the name given to it because of its proximity to the Fort Fisher Ferry Terminal landing, was created some 60 years ago as a dredge spoil disposal area for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Corps officials did not respond to Coastal Review’s questions about the project in time for publication.

After going nearly two decades without a sand injection, the island, battered by waves churned by storms and large container ships traveling to and from the North Carolina Port of Wilmington, had shrunk from more than 5 acres to less than 3.5 acres.

Unlike barrier islands, where erosion is a natural process that can create new habitat, dredge spoil islands like Ferry Slip are at the mercy of shoaling and machinery.

“In the case of the river islands, because they’re artificial, they’re not really self-sustaining. So they do need periodic dredge deposits,” Addison said.

Every five to seven years would be ideal, she said.

About nine islands in the lower Cape Fear River host nesting shorebirds most every year.

“Most of those islands are what we call important bird areas. So, they support a significant portion of the state population or they support a significant portion of the regional population of birds,” Addison said.

Ferry Slip and South Pelican Island, another dredged material island with view of the former, are the only two islands in the southeastern part of the state that support royal and sandwich terns. These black-crowned, gray-winged terns prefer low islands in sounds and estuaries.

“We’re usually talking (3,000) to 4,000 pairs of them, both species combined, between these two islands,” Addison said. “They like to nest on open, sandy habitat. Dredge islands, because they’re made out of dredged sand, have got that habitat.”

These islands are also inaccessible to foxes and racoons, animals that like to feast on the eggs and chicks, making them generally predator-free, with the exception of some bird species like the great horned owl and gulls.

There’s also little threat of human activity on the islands. Still, Audubon posts warning signs on the islands during nesting season.

After a brief, light rain one recent morning, Addison and two Corps officials made the quick trip by boat from the marina at Carolina Beach State Park to Ferry Slip to assess the newly sand-beefed island.

Hundreds of birds — dark-feathered double-crested cormorants, royal terns, laughing gulls and American oyster catchers — heavily peppered the island’s expanded shores, their chorus of shrieks and calls filling the air.

A single oystercatcher nest, no more than a slight indentation in the sand, was marked by its maker with wood planks that appeared to have drift ashore.

Intricate patterns made by birds’ feet indented the island’s sandy surface, interrupted only by the fresh tracks of a bulldozer used to push sand pumped onto the island.

Other than that, there are no signs equipment was on the island. Work has to be done by March 31, when the environmental window closes.

The spoil dredge islands are dedicated disposal sites for the Corps, owned by the state and managed by Audubon.

Audubon, in cooperation with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission’s Habitat Management Division, manage vegetation growth on the islands, generally through use of an herbicide and, in some cases, burning, Addison said.

“In some years if we didn’t do any treatment (vegetation) would cover 100% of the island,” she said. “Other species will use it, like brown pelicans, but we don’t really need more pelican habitat. We have a lot of brown pelican habitat. The turns are the ones that are missing their habitat.”

Addison said she’s expecting a “good year” for nesting terns and oystercatchers.

“They are starting to arrive,” she said. “The timing of the project is really great because it’s wrapping up just as they’re arriving so they’re going to come back and see this nice, new habitat. It’s nice when there’s a project that has to happen for infrastructure reasons that can be good for wildlife. If this sand we’re going on these islands it would be taken offshore so it would be lost entirely from the system. You ideally want to keep sediment in these estuaries and inlet systems where they can form habitat and provide buffer for shoreline whether developed or undeveloped.”

Officials from multiple North Carolina natural resource agencies have confirmed the first documented wild bird mortalities due to highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission announced Wednesday. 

The mortalities to date include a snow goose in Hyde County, a redhead duck in Carteret County and a bald eagle in Dare County, as well as a red-shouldered hawk in Wake County.

The snow goose was collected at Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge by refuge staff with initial testing at the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center. The other birds were collected by Wildlife Resources Commission staff with testing by the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study. 

Both the snow goose and redhead were observed with neurological signs consistent with HPAI before being euthanized. The hawk and eagle were found dead. While both labs detected presence of avian influenza virus, HPAI was confirmed by the National Veterinary Services Lab in Ames, Iowa.

The latest reports follow an announcement by the commission in January that a wild duck, a northern shoveler, harvested by a hunter in Hyde County, had tested positive for HPAI. The case followed confirmation of infected waterfowl in South Carolina. The infected birds were collected during the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s wild bird surveillance program and were asymptotic, hunter-harvested birds.

Only recently did biologists receive confirmed reports of mortality from HPAI.

Avian Influenza is classified as either low pathogenetic or highly pathogenic, depending on its ability to cause disease in domestic poultry. Wild bird mortalities can occur with HPAI, particularly in species of raptors that prey on waterfowl and in avian scavengers that feed on infected carcasses. Wild waterfowl typically do not exhibit signs of disease, and there is a low risk of transmission of HPAI to humans. To date, there have been no known human infections in North America.

“If someone comes across a mortality event involving five or more waterbirds or waterfowl, or a mortality event of any size for raptors or avian scavengers, including crows, ravens and gulls, we want to know about them,” Sarah Van de Berg, wildlife biologist with the Wildlife Commission, said in a statement. “We are particularly interested in morbidity events involving any number of those same bird species that are observed with clinical signs consistent with neurological impairment, like swimming in circles, head tilt and lack of coordination.”

The public is encouraged to report wild bird behavior as described by Van de Berg to the NC Wildlife Helpline at 866-318-2401, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, or email HWI@ncwildlife.org.

Sick or dying captive birds should be reported to your veterinarian, the N.C. Department of Agriculture & Consumer Science Veterinary Division, 919-707-3250, or the N.C. Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory System, 919-733-3986. For more information on HPAI, visit the NCDA&CS website. 

All bird mortalities attributed to HPAI or birds otherwise testing positive are being tracked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Check online for an up-to-date listing.     

MANTEO – See Outer Banks birds at the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island’s new nature play adventure “For the Birds” set to be unveiled Memorial Day weekend.

For the Birds is a nature trail that is home to year-round birds and those that visit the Outer Banks at certain times of the year. Expect to see woodpeckers, herons, osprey and many more birds. Visitors are invited to build a nest like a mockingbird or a killdeer, hop like a chickadee and balance like a heron.

For the Birds will be open throughout the summer and fall seasons and is included with regular aquarium admission, details of which can be found online.

All of the activity stations along the For the Birds trail are intended to be fun, educational and adventurous exploration into the variety of birds seen in the area, and the grounds of the aquarium are great for viewing birds in their habitats, including purple martins, nesting osprey, cormorants fishing in the sound, and many species visiting the bird feeders on the trail, according to the release.

“Birds are such a big part of our ecosystem and surroundings on the Outer Banks,” said Exhibits Curator Colleen Shytle in a statement. “We see them every day and it’s natural to wonder what they are up to. ‘For the Birds’ gives visitors a peek into the lives of birds and the skills they use to make the Outer Banks their home.”

The wooded Nature Play area covers roughly 2.5 acres on the grounds of the  Roanoke Island aquarium. The trail connects to the wildflower Meadow and soundside fields for even more outdoor excursions.

Featured Photo

Snow geese take flight over the Pungo Unit of the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern North Carolina in this photo by Sam Bland.

The refuge stretches through Hyde, Tyrrell, and Washington counties, covering 110,106 acres. The 12,350-acre Pungo Unit was established in the early 1960s to provide wintering habitat for waterfowl and other migratory birds. Large numbers of waterfowl concentrate on this relatively small area in the winter with peak numbers of more than 100,000 each winter.  Species that winter on Pungo include tundra swan, snow goose and more than 20 species of ducks including wood duck, teal, mallard and pintail.

Learn More

• Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge

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. 

Featured Photo

A snowy egret makes his way across the rock jetty at Fort Fisher, seeking shelter from the brisk January wind. Photo: Terri Chabot

Reprinted from the Island Free Press

Birders search for snowy owls amid the dunes of Ocracoke Island. Photo: Connie Leinbach

OCRACOKE — Peter Vankevich has been a birding ambassador this winter for more than 100 visitors wanting to see the two rare snowy owls now calling Ocracoke their winter hunting grounds.

There may even be a third one, Vankevich says on a recent morning while driving his red Jeep on the South Point beach where the owls have been seen most frequently.

He has gone out almost every day with folks since Jan. 4 to look for the owls, which typically plant themselves on the top of the dunes, constantly turning their heads 320 degrees in search of prey. Owls are night birds and most people hear them at night rather than see them, but snowy owls are out during the daylight.

“There’s just something about these snowy owls,” Vankevich says, with his ready smile and bubbling enthusiasm. “I call it the aesthetic of them on the dunes. Is there something more? I don’t know. Having these birds here is really unusual.”

His posts on his Facebook page prompted locals to drive with him for sightings.  Then his posts on the Carolina Birders Facebook page prompted birders from all over the state and beyond to visit Ocracoke in the last several weeks, resulting in an uptick of winter tourists.

“More than 150 people have come so far,” he said a week ago, after shuttling about 20 visitors—the largest group yet–to the dunes between the airport ramp and South Point ramp where the owls have most often been spotted.

“One day I had 17 people and another day 14,” Vankevich says.  “One man from Raleigh has seen 18 of the 19 species of North American owls and the last one he needed was the snowy.  He left here with a bang because he saw and photographed both of them.

“With just a couple of exceptions, everyone who’s come here has seen it,” he says.

It didn’t take long for the latest group to find one of the owls — the one Vankevich calls “Stanley.”

“This is truly amazing,” said Bob Oberfelder of Cary, as the group members got out their binoculars and telescopes. He had taken photos of a snowy owl more than 25 years ago in Delaware. When he heard about the snowy owls on Ocracoke, he decided to make the trip closer to home.

Peter Vankevich shows off some of the thank-you notes that birders have sent him for allowing them to see the owls. Photo: Connie Leinbach

“When am I going to get to look at them closer to home than this?” he said.

That was the sentiment of most of the group.

Matthew Janson, 15, his brother Chris, 14, and their mom, Liz, traveled from Charlotte to see the bird.  A ninth-grader, Matthew is an avid birder and already speaks with authority about the birds.

“These are all immatures because of the amount of black on their bodies,” he says after viewing the owl through his own scope.

Ken and Toni Blanton of Durham made it a birthday gift for Toni.

“I’ve been looking at pictures of the owl since December and have been making myself sick over it,” Toni said. “This is the best birthday ever.”

On the drive along U.S. 64 and N.C. 12 a bald eagle flew in front of their car, and they saw tundra swans and snow geese on Pea Island. “It’s been a white bird weekend,” Toni said.

Vankevich gets as much of a kick making sure the birders have a memorable experience as the birders do in getting this chance to see a rare bird.

“A couple in their 70s came all the way from Asheville to see the owls,” he says. “I can’t tell you the joy they had from this.”

The first owl that was first seen Dec. 27 on the island is all white.  According to eBird, it may be a male as males are all-white and females are darker.

However, that didn’t stop Vankevich, with the help of a group from Oriental in Pamlico County to give these two names.

“Since the white one probably came from the northern Quebec area, I suggested we name it Blanche,” Vankevich says as he and a reporter drive along the South Point beach scanning the dunes.   A Facebook conversation ensued, with someone suggesting the other one be named Stella (with apologies to “A Streetcar Named Desire”).

“No, I said, since the other one may be a male, let’s name it Stanley,” he says.

A snowy owl pokes its head above the dune grass. Photo: Connie Leinbach

An amateur birder since his 20s, Vankevich, 60, is retired as head of the information section of the U.S. Copyright Office at the Library of Congress. His current job is manager of the Ocracoke Community Library.  He also hosts a weekly music show on the island’s radio station WOVV, volunteers at the Ocracoke Preservation Society and—most important to him–is a volunteer with the Ocracoke Volunteer Fire Department. Vankevich also organizes the Christmas Bird Count each year on Ocracoke and Portsmouth.

A Maine native, Vankevich is a font of knowledge about birds, and most Friday mornings hosts a bird walk somewhere on the island.  He also will send out tidbits of information to islanders, such as a recent e-mail explaining that the swirling flocks of birds everyone is seeing now are cedar waxwings that are munching on the cedar tree berries.

While driving the beach, he points out willets, sanderlings, Bonaparte’s gulls, great black-backed gulls and more.  He counsels that term the “sandpiper” is out of date. Call them “shorebirds,” he says. “Seagulls” are no longer called such and are simply referred to as “gulls”– because they can be seen as far inland as the Midwest, he says.

Vankevich stops to look at a great black-backed gull, which is the largest gull in the world, he says, almost the same size as a Bald Eagle.

The wanderings of the owls this far south is called an “irruption,” according to birders. Vankevich thinks the warmer Arctic weather produced more fledglings, which has put pressure on their food source, typically lemmings. So, the owls have simply ventured farther south for food territories. They eat “fur and feathers,” he says.

“From GPS tags, we have learned that they will go out in the ocean and grab ducks,” he says.

Owls are night birds, and most people hear them at night rather than see them, but snowy owls are out during the day because in the Arctic they have to adapt to many extremes, including times where there can be up to 24 hours of sunlight, Vankevich says.  This year, they’ve been spotted as far south as Florida, he says. One even hopped a boat in North America and traveled to the Netherlands. Owls have also been seen on Hatteras Island.

Cedar waxwings gather on a cedar tree to eat berries. Photo: Connie Leinbach

“They don’t like the wind,” Vankevich says about where to look for them.  When it’s very windy, the owls can sometimes be found in the secondary dunes.  They also have been spotted frequently at the shack at the end of the runway at the Ocracoke airport where they apparently roost. “Owls are known to hang around airports,” Vankevich says. “They’re often found in the winter at Logan Airport (Boston).”

Elizabeth Hanrahan, a wildlife rehabilitation specialist who lives on the island, has been a part of the effort. She does not get paid for her work rehabilitating injured birds and wild animals, but when folks ask if they can pay Peter for his time, he has suggested they give donations to Hanrahan’s Ocracoke Wildlife Rehabilitation.

“Peter has done an outstanding job publicizing the owl and getting people to come to Ocracoke who’ve never been here,” she says.  “I’m eternally grateful for the donations.”

Wayne Garrish, owner of the Bluff Shoals Motel, has had a few of the visiting birders stay at his establishment this winter. “We’ve definitely benefitted from the owl,” he says.

Betty Helen Chamberlain, co-owner of Captain’s Landing Hotel Suites, also has noted the arrival of patrons who have come specifically to see the snowy owls, and Sean Death, manager of the Beachcomber campgrounds and gas station, has met many of the birders.

“It’s definitely helped business,” he says. “Every little bit helps at this time of the year.”

Hanrahan speculated that perhaps the appearance of the owls presaged the colder, snowy weather the island has had this year. “Several years ago there was another irruption of snowy owls in the South, and after that we had a huge snow storm,” she says.

That might that be why owls are synonymous with wisdom, or something else other-worldly.



“They are prophecy birds,” says Sarah Klinger, who with her husband, Jeff, came to the island to see the owls. “This is just exciting to see.”

Birders wishing to see these owls might be wise to come soon to Ocracoke as Matthew Janson speculates that they might be gone by early March.

• Snowy owl photo gallery

On Jan. 3, Emerald Isle resident Jim Craig will be trampling around out-doors, somewhere in the vicinity of Camp Lejeune near Jacksonville, looking for birds and probably snapping photos of some of the ones he sees.

Those are not, by any means, unusual pastimes for Craig, a geology professor emeritus at Virginia Tech University and an avid amateur ornithologist who writes the weekly “Notes from Nature” column for the Tideland News, a weekly newspaper in Swansboro. But on that particular Thursday, Craig will be part of a much bigger picture: He’ll not only be viewing and photographing his avian friends and acquaintances, he’ll also be counting them as part of the National Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count.

Walker Golder

Jim Craig

According to Walker Golder, deputy state director for Audubon North Carolina, thousands of others will be involved in the count, which runs from Friday through Jan. 5 at various locations throughout the state, the nation and much of the world.

“It’s a lot of fun, a great social event and yet it’s very important,” Golder said. “The Christmas Bird Count is one of the longest-running bird monitoring programs in the world. It’s been going on since 1900. And what it does is give us a snapshot of the diversity and abundance of birds in specific areas and in the country.”

The first counts in North Carolina will begin Friday in some locations, and will get under way in the coastal region on Saturday in Kitty Hawk and Sunday in Morehead City. Other coastal counts are scheduled for Dec. 27 at Cape Hatteras, Dec. 29 at Lake Mattamuskeet, Dec. 30 on Portsmouth Island, Dec. 31 on Ocracoke Island, Jan 4 in Southport and Bald Head Island and Jan. 5 in Wilmington.

If counting birds and playing a key role in understanding the trends in the world of our beautiful feathered friends are things you’ve always wanted to do but have put off, there’s no excuse this year: For the first time in decades, there’s no $5 fee to participate in the Christmas count. Click here to find a count in your area and to sign up. Either call the leader or click on the email address to send a message.

Craig has been involved in the bird count for close to 30 years, the first 24 in Blacksburg, Va., where he was a professor at Virginia Tech, and the last three on the Crystal Coast.

“It gives you a chance to see birds you might normally see, in places you might not normally go,” said Craig, who added that many geolo-gists, by nature, also become birders. “You expect to see the normal ducks and woodpeckers and nuthatches. But you almost always see something unexpected.

“For example, two years ago, just as I was finishing up, I saw a wood-cock. I hadn’t seen one in 15 or 20 years. And there’s a pretty good chance to see eagles and ospreys and harriers (both the military and the avian versions of the last two).”

The count in Morehead City last year was typical. Thirty-six people par-ticipated on a day when the temperature ranged from 38 to 44 de-grees. Those intrepid counters put in 131 hours and identified 156 species.

The most numerous bird was – no surprise – the starling, at 1,884, and the ubiquitous ring-billed gull was next, at 1,637. There were nine bald eagles, three piping plovers and zero, not one, black skimmer, despite it being the namesake for a street in Emerald Isle. Nor was there a par-tridge, in a pear tree or elsewhere.

Common grackle

Little blue heron

Eastern meadowlark

Field sparrow

Common tern Birds in Trouble These birds are either permanent residents of the N.C. coast or are common winter or summer visitors. They are also on the National Audubon Society’s list of Common Birds in Decline. The annual Christmas Bird Counts and other data show that the 20 birds on the national  list lost at least half their populations in just four decades. Some species nose-dived as much as 80 percent. The findings point to serious problems with both local habitats and national environmental trends.

The numbers, Golder said, are considered accurate, both within indi-vidual count circles and in total, and the count is well-respected; many count leaders do it year after year, bringing a high degree of dedication and professionalism to a task that results in data that are useful to scientists and, on occasion, to public policy-makers. The counts have influenced Congressional decisions.

“This is not just about counting birds,” Dr. Gary Langham, Audubon’s chief scientist, emphasized in a news release about this year’s count. “Data from the Audubon Christmas Bird Count are at the heart of hun-dreds peer-reviewed scientific studies and inform decisions by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of the Interior, and the EPA.

“Because birds are early indicators of environmental threats to habitats we share, this is a vital survey of North America and, increasingly, the Western Hemisphere.”

Indeed, Golder said, one thing that experts are watching closely is whether global climate change will affect the ranges of birds. The key is that the count looks at the same areas each year, and the data set is very long.

“I have not analyzed the data for that myself, but I know there are peo-ple who are looking specifically for shifts related to climate change,” he said.

It does appear, he said, that more hummingbirds are staying in North Carolina through the winter.

Another noticeable trend, he said, is an increase in the number of bald eagles in the area. That mirrors the recovery of the bird, the very sym-bol of the nation, which had been on the Endangered Species List until 2007.

Another change in recent years, Golder said, has been a significant in-crease in counts of the Eurasian collared dove. The collared dove was introduced into the Bahamas in the 1970s and spread from there to Florida in the early 1980s. It’s now being seen all the way west to Cali-fornia and as far north as the Great Lakes, Nova Scotia and Alaska.

Birds, of course, are marvelously adaptive; the starling, among the most numerous species in America, is itself an invasive species, from Europe.

Audubon officials say the Christmas count also has helped reveal seri-ous declines in some species, including the Northern Bobwhite quail, and has aided in the comeback of some waterfowl, as conservation measures began or intensified after poor numbers in counts.

Craig, like Golder, said that the counts involve everyone from newbies, who know next to nothing about birding and might not recognize a common bluebird, to experts like John Fussell, an author of a definitive bird guide who leads the count in Morehead City. It’s serious science all the same, Craig said.

“It’s true that it’s a one-day snapshot, but it’s a snapshot that has been taken for 112 years now,” he said. “When you line up all of those ‘snap-shots’ of more or less the same places … you are able to get a pretty clear picture of a lot of things, like species that are on the increase or in decline.

“It’s ‘flawed’ science – all science is flawed – but it does a lot to increase our understanding of birds and habitat,” Craig continued.

The Christmas count, Craig said, also brings in new birders each year, and they become new “citizen-scientists” who become dedicated stakeholders with personal investments in preserving and protecting not just birds, but the natural habitats of the region. They learn quickly.

Golder said it’s not too late to get involved, as count circle leaders will accept volunteers literally until the last minute. Those who want to participate in the count do not need any training or any special skills. Nor do they have to be particularly physically fit.

“It can be as easy as a walk down the beach,” he said. “Or you could be in the marsh or the forest, or in the urban setting. There will be people on the water in boats, inshore and in the near-shore ocean.”

Generally, there’s something for everybody, and the count leader will work to make sure a person is assigned to an area he is capable of handling comfortably.

There are also safeguards, Golder said, to ensure the counts are as ac-curate as possible. The count leader looks at all the data before turning it in and will question anything that looks out of the ordinary. For example, if someone in Carteret County noted 50 black skimmers when there had been none the previous year, that would raise a flag. So would a precipitous decline in a common species or a sudden appearance of a species far out of its normal range. Once the count leader turns in his or her report, that data is similarly reviewed on the station and national levels.

All of the data is publicly available on the Audubon website, and is used daily by countless researchers, including those in government.

In 2007, the data were instrumental in the development of two Audubon State of the Birds Reports: Common Birds in Decline, which revealed that some of America’s most beloved and familiar birds have taken a nosedive over the past 40 years; and WatchList 2007, which identified 178 rare species in the continental U.S. and 39 in Hawaii that are imperiled.

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.