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Bunting 1, Murrelet 0



Hi Carolinabirders,

With Norm Budnitz doing business in Charlotte and the Long-billed 
Murrelet reported only an hour from there, Norm and I decided to go for 
it today and drove to the Duke Power public boat ramp on Fishing Creek 
Reservior near Great Falls. Alas, no luck. We arrived at roughly 12:30 
and found a small group of birders watching the water; they had a distant 
sighting of something small, but this bird - whatever it was - was not 
re-found while we were there. The other birders left to try to find other 
vantage points for viewing the lake, failed, and headed north with plans 
to look for the Snow Bunting at Ebenezer Park near Rock Hill, SC. Norm 
and I continued scanning the water for three hours with only Double- 
crested Cormorants, Bonaparte's Gulls, a couple of Pied-billed Grebes, a 
Great Blue Heron, an immature Bald Eagle, and a few landbirds to show for 
it. Not bad birds, but nothing worth driving three and a half hours 
for...

Around 4 PM, which sounded to us like "late afternoon" (the only time 
specified for the previous murrelet sightings), we finally gave up and 
left. We had just enough daylight left for another birding venture, so we 
followed the other unsuccessful murrelet-seekers (JB from Spartanburg and 
Ricky from Hendersonville) to Ebenezer Park to look for the Snow Bunting. 
They had arrived not long before us and not seen anything yet. As Norm 
and I scanned around, I spotted a bird on the island in the middle of the 
lake, sitting on the sandy beach. That bird turned out to be a Killdeer, 
but in identifying it, Norm spotted a smaller bird creeping around 
nearby. Nothing about it indicated any bird other than a Snow Bunting, 
and after several minutes of observation, I finally watched it stretch 
one wing out, showing off a big white patch.

So the 7-hour round trip was not in vain after all. And I now have Snow 
Bunting, Lapland Longspur, and Smith's Longspur all on my SC list, 
without having seen any of these northern vagrants in NC!

Here's hoping the Flycatcher and all those Alligator River NWR raptors 
hang around until next weekend...

Good birding,

Josh



Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Zoology

jsr6@acpub.duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/