A Week Away from Brooklyn

We escaped New York City for a week over the Independence Day holiday. My wife wanted to chill out on the beaches of the Outer Banks of North Carolina as she'd never visited. I once spent a long weekend in Duck many years ago and enjoyed it. That said, we decided to take a road trip down to Kill Devil Hills, home of the Wright Brothers first flight.

My wife is only a sometimes birder, but does enjoy hiking and looking at nature with me. Although hanging around with me it's not possible to ignore birds and nature ;-). There are several good places to go birding close to where we were staying, plus even just sitting on the beach is a totally chill way to see the local wildlife.

Beach at the end of our road

Osprey passing our apartment balcony

Barn Swallows and Eastern Bluebirds nest throughout the neighborhood, so we were greeted by them every morning.

Barn Swallow

Bluebird bringing breakfast to fledgling

Eastern Bluebird

The large dune where the Wright Brothers made their first flight is where the town of Kill Devil Hills got its name. A visit to the national monument atop the 90' hill provides excellent 360º views of the area. Now planted with grasses and other plants to stabilize the hill, there were lots of interesting butterflies, grasshoppers, crickets and dragonflies around. I spotted one interesting insect perched on the side of the monument, which I'd never seen before: Giant Antlion.

Wright Brothers National Monument

Adult Giant Antlion

Brown Pelicans were a constant presence as they flap-soared up and down the coast seemingly from dawn to dusk. Anyone that doubts the close connection between birds and dinosaurs need only get a close look at one of these huge birds.

Brown Pelican

A short drive from our apartment is Nags Head Woods Preserve, a national landmark managed by The Nature Conservancy. It is one of the largest remaining maritime forests on the East Coast. We spent an early morning hiking some of the trails. A couple of bird highlights were Yellow-billed Cuckoo near the visitors center and Prothonotary Warbler along the Sweetgum Swamp trail.

Next to the Visitors Center

Sweetgum Swamp Trail

One thing that really interested me was the diversity of spiders seen along the trails. Some I'd only ever seen in my insect field guides. The most common one encountered was the crab-like Spinybacked Orbweaver. We also saw quite a few Black Purseweb Spiders, a species of trapdoor spider. My photos don't do it justice, but the Arrow-shaped Orbweaver is a truly unique looking arachnid.

Arrow-shaped Orbweaver

Orchard Orbweaver

Golden-Silk Orb Weaver

Spinybacked Orbweaver

Black Purseweb Spider

It was clearly egg laying season for the turtle families as in quick succession we encountered a Snapping Turtle walking through the woods and an Eastern Box Turtle digging a hole in the hiking trail.

Snapping Turtle

Eastern Box Turtle laying eggs

The most common butterfly and dragonfly we saw that day were Spicebush Swallowtail and Eastern Pondhawk.

Spicebush Swallowtail

Female Eastern Pondhawk

We set aside one day to visit Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. In retrospect, I could have spent the entire week at that place. Only about a 25 minute drive south of Kill Devil Hills, the refuge in located on Pea Island, a 13 mile long barrier island. Habitats within the refuge include fresh and brackish water ponds, salt flats, salt marsh, dunes and ocean beach. It's a birder's paradise pretty much any time of year.

We joined a scheduled walk that met at the refuge visitors center, about 3.75 miles south of the Bonner Bridge. I was surprised the see 18 people show up for the early morning walk, but was more amazed to learn one of the birders was from Williamsburg, Brooklyn! The two leaders were Peggy and Audrey. Both were incredibly knowledgeable of the habitats (not just birds) and great spotters. I can take credit for finding one bird which isn't seen there very often: Glossy Ibis. Both leaders were very excited when I very nonchalantly pointed it out. The common ibis for that area is White Ibis.

View of North Pond

Our shorebird list from that morning included Black-necked Stilt, American Avocet, Black-bellied Plover, Killdeer, Short-billed Dowitcher, Willet (Eastern & Western), Greater Yellowlegs and Least Sandpiper. There was a nice assortment of gulls and terns, including a fairly large flock of roosting Black Skimmers (~200): Laughing Gull, Herring Gull, Great Black-backed Gull, Black Skimmer, Least Tern, Black Tern, Forster's Tern, Sandwich Tern and Royal Tern. As for wading birds, Tricolored Heron were fairly abundant, which was nice considering their scarcity in recent years around Brooklyn. Here's our full waders list: Tricolored Heron, Snowy Egret, Great Egret, Great Blue Heron, White Ibis and Glossy Ibis. A couple of nice songbirds for our morning list were Seaside Sparrow and Eastern Meadowlark. A lone Brant seemed out of place and, indeed, was a July rarity for the refuge.

Black-necked Stilt with chicks

Black-necked Stilt

Seaside Dragonlet

Royal Tern

Glossy Ibis

Ghost Crab

Least Tern

Willet

I'm sure I've skipped over a bunch of things from our week in the Outer Banks. Given that this was our first time there together, we did a lot of preliminary exploration. We plan on returning and possibly staying closer to Pea Island. I'm even thinking about a group birding road trip to the area. My friend Mike is heading to Cape Hatteras next month for a pelagic birding trip. I'm interested in hearing about his experience.