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Too easy weekend
- To: carolinabirds <carolinabirds@duke.edu>
- Subject: Too easy weekend
- From: "ric carter" <ricc@mindspring.com>
- Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 23:18:56 -0500
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
We were back at the house on Tranter's Creek in Little Washington this
weekend. We're on stilts on the last dry land before the meeting of Tranters
Creek and Cherry Run, Beaufort/Pitt County line. Not much af a weekend for
birding by numbers, but quality was very nice.
Saturday: Kitty noticed a kayak in the creek. As Beth (8 years) took a look
she asked if that bird was a duck or what? After more patience than any of
us deserved, she finally steered our adult eyes to the edge of the yard near
the swamp buffer to the creek. There, about 50 feet away, was a woodcock
bopping up, down, and around probing the yard for worms.
This was about 1:30 or so in the afternoon (during the first half of the
Tarheel game). He hung around having lunch long enough for me to get the
video camera on him from the deck. He even hung around long enough for us to
occasionally stop watching and go do other things. We kept seeing him until
sometime shortly after the game when he finally disappeared into the shadows
of the swamp. Of course, as well as it blended, we may have just been
missing him.
Sunday: The surprise snow down east earlier this year dropped a lot of our
trees and limbs there. Among them was the favorite perch of a barred owl we
saw on occasion. We feared we'd seen the last of him.
Not so. Kitty spotted him through the kitchen window early in the morning.
He found a new spot in one of the hollies -- nearer the house. He was not
more than 15 feet out from the deck and about six feet higher than eye view
from the deck.
We watched him from before ten in the morning until sometime around four in
the afternoon. He didn't do much but snooze and look disapprovingly at
whatever activity went on up and down our steps. The highlight was preening
after the morning showers tapered off. He worked on several of his
primaries, holding them snuggly in his beak and running all the way from his
flesh to the very tip of the longest feather.
The MOST cooperative birds I've seen in a while.
Ric Carter
Washington/Garner, NC