WINGS OVER WATER : Finding Feathered Friends In Eastern North Carolina

by Renee Wolcott Shannon

Reprinted from Coastwatch, a bimonthly magazine of North Carolina Sea Grant. For more information, write Coastwatch, NCSU Box 8605, Raleigh, NC 27695-8605, or check the Sea Grant website: http://www.ncsu.edu/seagrant

Im kayaking across Milltail Creek in an open-topped yellow kayak, dripping water all over my jeans and trying to keep my camera dry. I am not a bird-watcher. I can identify cardinals and blue jays, sparrows and crows, robins and mourning doves--the avian residents of my suburban neighborhood--and thats about it. Here at the Wings Over Water bird-watching festival, Im definitely a minority.

Other brightly colored plastic vessels dot the surface of the pond. Im surrounded by people in winter coats with binoculars strapped around their necks. Theyre here to see wood ducks, pileated woodpeckers and the great blue herons. Im here to enjoy the clear, cold autumn weather, to see a few birds for myself, and perhaps to figure out what has drawn my companions from across the country.

This morning at the opening breakfast, keynote speaker Ken Kaufman described his lifelong love affair with birds, a fascination that began when he was 6 years old. After he graduated from college, he hitchhiked for several years, looking for birds all over North America. Birds seem so free, he says, and people have always been attracted to them for that reason. Yet they arent as free as they appear--even as they cross borders and continents with ease, they follow strict schedules and predictable routes.

Serious bird-watchers arrive armed with information about the birds theyre likely to find. Many of them can identify more than 200 birds by sight. Theyre here for the love of the chase, building life lists that keep track of all the species theyve ever seen.

Bird-watching is a big business. Jack Thigpen, North Carolina Sea Grants coastal recreation and tourism specialist, says estimates show that birders pump billions of dollars into the national economy. Local communities also benefit from bird-watching festivals, and Wings Over Water is the result of a partnership of sponsors who want to bring responsible, sustainable development to coastal North Carolina.

Mike Bryant, manager to the Alligator River and Pea Island National Wildlife Refuges, hatched the idea of a festival to celebrate the wetland-dependent birds that flock to the coastal plain every fall. He brought the idea from Texas, where ecotourism events--including a birding festival--brought more than $13 million a year to the lower Rio Grande valley. Bryant saw a great opportunity for a similar festival in eastern North Carolina.

Coastal wildlife refuges are rich in natural resources, drawing tourists even in the off-season, Bryant says. Pea Island, in particular, is a birders paradise. Bryant saw a birding festival as a way to emphasize activities people enjoy at refuges--hunting, fishing, wildlife-spotting and photography--while also injecting money into the local economy.

This is a chance to bring together community folks and to provide tourism that is compatible with wildlife, he says. It sends a good message about the resources we manage. Its a win-win situation.

Many species of birds overwinter along the Outer Banks, in the sounds and pocosins, and on Lake Mattamuskeet, making a November festival a logical choice. The partners sponsoring Wings Over Water--including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Outer Banks Chamber of Commerce, the Coastal Wildlife Refuge Society and the Dare County Tourist Bureau--are eager to bring people to the area at a time when tourism traditionally tapers off for the year. And birders seem happy to trade crowds and sun for quiet, deserted beaches, cold air and the chance to glimpse a rare creature.

Attendees come from as far away as Canada, California, Texas and Florida in search of their feathered friends. Distance is no object, Bryant says. So local businesses and ecotourism vendors benefit from an unseasonable influx of out-of-state money. Tourists see what a beautiful place North Carolinas coast can be, even in late fall.

For the second annual festival, North Carolina Sea Grant has teamed up with the sponsors of Wings Over Water to find out just how much money the birders bring to area businesses. Thigpen, a sociologist, has designed a survey for the participants to fill out, providing valuable information about their spending patterns, interests, and impact on the local economy. The resulting information will be used to market an plan for later events.

For now, Wings Over Water works hard to provide something for everyone. The schedule includes a guided tour through a salt marsh, a hike through Buxton Woods Coastal Reserve and a chance to howl at red wolves, in addition to innumerable bird-watching opportunities. Nature-lovers of all kinds can inspect the scenery from cars and buses, pontoon boats, the Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry and canoes, as well as on foot.

My paddling adventure in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge is one of the general natural history trips, and its my first time in a kayak. As we leave the open water and the last colorful leaves behind, Im still searching for birds.

Though there are wood-duck nesting boxes in the trees along the shore, they are empty--our guide says the ducks actually prefer to next in natural cavities in the he tree trunks. A few members of my group spy a woodpecker through their binoculars, but I cant see it. Finally, as I blunder down a root-choked ditch, chickadees flit in the branches overhead.

My hands are numb with cold and my jeans are stiff with water by the time I clamber from the kayak at journeys end. Seated in my unfamiliar craft, Ive sailed beneath towering bald cypress trees and wended my way through a maze of marshgrass channels. Still, Im only too ready to climb back into my car for the long drive to Kitty Hawk, where Im staying with friends.

Im happy to be able to throw my wet clothes in a dryer and to warm my cold bones with a home-cooked meal. But most of the festivals 250 other participants are staying at local hotels, eating at area restaurants and buying gifts at nearby shops.

Thigpens survey results will show that more than 90 percent of these participants are from outside the coastal region, and that they contribute more than $90,000 to the local economy. Most of their spending is for food and lodging, but birders also drop significant sums on registration fees and birding equipment.

Fortunately for Wings Over Water, coastal North Carolina meets many of the criteria birders seek in their field trips, according to the survey results. Their number-one priority is seeing a wide variety of birds, but other high-ranking items include clean air, crime-free communities and scenic places to view wildlife.

My hosts have a clock that chimes every hour with the song of a different bird. By 6 a.m. Saturday, when the house wren warbles its tune, Im already on the road to Lake Mattamuskeet for my next field trip.

The sun rises as I drive, and my breath smokes in the unheated car. Heavy frost bristles on the roadside, where crisp white-edged grass slopes down to meet black canals. Fog rises from the water. By 8 a.m., when the tour starts, Lake Mattamuskeet glints like metal in the sun.

We winter about 18 species of waterfowl on the lake and the adjacent freshwater marshes, says John Stanton, wildlife biologist at Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge. Altogether, the lake is a temporary home for 150,000 waterfowl. We have about 30,000 tundra swans and 10-15,000 geese, Stanton says. In winter, waterfowl, bald eagles and hawks are really what show themselves in a big way.

And this trip does not disappoint. From the lakeshore, I can see hundreds of snow-white swans. Birders spot a great horned owl, a rare Eurasian wigeon and a few Rosss geese. Thats a smaller version of the snow goose, says Stanton.

Surprises include a blue-headed vireo, hermit thrush, and pine and palm warblers--small songbirds that should have been long gone to Central and South America, Stanton says. By far the biggest surprise is a black bear.

The tour leapfrogs from an observation deck overlooking the marsh to the refuges headquarters beside historic Mattamuskeet Lodge. In the tall reeds beside the lodge, invisible songbirds make beautiful music. When I ask Stanton what is singing, he says they are marsh wrens: They sing a really nice song but you hardly ever see them.

I chase a belted kingfisher along one of the drainage ditches--its wings flash blue as it stays one step ahead of me, chattering. At Lake Landing, where birders walk the dikes at the east end of the lake, I spot a huge, crested gray bird on a snag over the water, its head hunched to its own breast. A black-crowned night heron, Stanton says. Im beginning to enjoy this feathery scavenger hunt.

I dawdle after the tour is over, and join a small group exploring the lodge, which was originally a pumping station to drain the lake and expose fertile farmland. New Holland, the town that once flourished on the dry lake bed, is now gone--Mattamuskeet Lodge is all that remains. From its observation tower, once the smokestack for the pumping station, I can see huge bass swimming in the canal far below.

As I drive back along the refuges entrance road, I stop to snap pictures of long-legged wading birds stalking through the marsh. My cameras zoom lens is no match for a good pair of binoculars, but I catch clear glimpses of ducks, turtles sunning on a log, some long-necked white birds like cranes or egrets, and a mysterious dark bird with a sharp bill.

Back at the Wings Over Water headquarters at Roanoke Island Festival Park, birders check a series of boards to see which birds have been spotted. Keith Watson, natural resource management specialist for the National Park Services Cape Hatteras Group, keeps the master list up-to-date through cellular phone contact with group leaders.

A father and son from Oak Hill, Va., say they want to see the Eurasian wigeon, clay-colored sparrow and black-backed gull.

Whats an oldsquaw? I ask, intrigued by the picturesque name. Its a duck, says the father.

But some of the birds listed are more unusual than their names suggest. Weve only seen the rough-legged hawk on a few occasions, says Watson. Maybe once a year or so. When theyre here, you certainly get a lot of people going to look at them. The rufous hummingbird, which birders have also spotted this weekend, is a western species that doesnt breed in the east. But the hummingbirds winter each year in Buxton, Watson says.

I ask him about my mystery bird in the Mattamuskeet marshes, and he invites me to look it up in one of the many bird encyclopedias offered for sale. Nothing looks quite right. Finally I settle on a brown wading bird with white flecks on its neck and an unsteady, bobbing gait.

A limpkin? Watson, a soft-spoken man, is unusually excited. Youd better be absolutely positive about that.

I experience a moment of mingled euphoria and panic as he tells me that a limpkin sighting will send people stampeding to their cars. Apparently birders will drive for hours at the chance of glimpsing a rare bird, and my dubious limpkin is much more likely in South America or western Florida than in the marshes of Lake Mattamuskeet.

Of course, I cant be sure of what Ive seen. After further questioning, Watson convinces me Ive seen a juvenile great blue heron.

Still, for one brief moment Ive tasted the thrill of bird-watching: the search for something wild and fleeting, the satisfaction in discovering something new. With the bird book open in my hands, I know what a limpkin sounds like, what it eats and how it flies. For a few seconds, I feel like a real expert.

Outside, the Wings Over Water Festival is in full swing. While booths inside the headquarters are open everyday, selling T-shirts and posters, binoculars and books, the festival is a one-day celebration to bring the birders together with the local community. There are exhibits and games, a photography contest, kayaking lessons and carnival food. Kids can make kites, get their faces painted or build their own birdfeeders.

Gwen White, Wings Over Waters executive director, is especially proud of the festival and of the way Wings Over Water has grown. Im proud of the community for the way its pulled around and supported the event, she says. In 1999, she promises, the Saturday gathering will be even more of a family festival--well have music and lots of environmental activities for the children. Were working with Scouting so that Scouts will be able to fulfill some badge requirements.

Overall, White says, the festivals organizers are working hard to make Wings Over Water more inclusive, an event that supports birding as well as other naturalist activities. Wings Over Water has always been called A Celebration of Wildlife and Wildlands in Eastern North Carolina, White says. Were reaching out to tap into all kinds of environmental activities.

On my last day I get to sleep in until the bird clock chirps 7: a robin, one of the few birds I knew before coming to Wings Over Water.

My final field trip is a tramp through Nags Head Woods, a wildlife preserve owned by The Nature Conservancy. Im looking forward to exploring the globally rare maritime forest, towering dunes and dark swamps as promised in the schedule. And my last trip proves to be a perfect close to a wonderful weekend.

Jeff DeBlieu, whose wife, Jan, wrote Hatteras Journal and Wind, is the Nags Head Woods preserve director and our hike leader. Hes also a talented storyteller who makes the natural history of the preserve come alive.

For three hours, we follow winding trails uphill and down, marveling at the beauty of the woods and the wetlands. Oaks, hickories and beeches push from the sandy soil, tangled with poison ivy and trumpet vine. Swamps lie between ancient sand ridges, home to the stumps of long-dead trees.

We pay respects to the preserves former residents, who lie in a hollow beneath crumbling gravestones and bleached white conch shells. Beneath the roots of the preserves oldest tree, a 500-year-old oak, I find the skulls of nutria, with their orange, beaver-like teeth. And we search without success for the pileated woodpecker we can hear calling in the trees.

The pileated is the largest woodpecker in North America. In Florida, they call it the Oh-my-God bird, says Robin Wallace, an avid birder and fish biologist. Huge size notwithstanding, we never spot the woodpecker--though we do see wood ducks and phoebes.

In a stunning conclusion to our tour, DeBlieu guides us up the steep slope of Run Hill, a towering sand dune that has been moving slowly to the southwest for more than a century. It swallows the live trees in its path and leaves behind only dead snags. From the top, we can look out over estuarine marshes and Roanoke Sound to the dark shoreline of Manteo. I leave Nags Head Woods with a silent promise to return. As I climb the span of the long bridge from Manteo to the mainland, three pelicans fly low over the summit. Its a kind of benediction, and a fitting end to a magical three days. For a moment, suspended between the sound and sky, I feel as free as they seem.