North Carolina Coast and Outer Banks: Getting Ready

Welcome to our birding adventures! This is our first blog post and we hope you enjoy it and ones yet to come. 

Dan and I are looking forward to spending a week in mid-February observing wintering waterfowl, coastal seabirds, marsh birds, and every feathered thing in-between! We'll take a birding library with us along with local maps of the NWRs and of the Outer Banks.

Some of these books are pretty dog-eared. Since we don't visit the ocean that much we find we need to re-educate ourselves on the birds we might find there. We just may need to know such important information as to whether we are looking at a Lesser-Black Backed Gull or a Greater-Black Backed Gull as well as identifying a whole host of other birds that need careful observation to determine which is which.  Once identified, we can read about them and learn about their remarkable little feathery lives. It honestly makes you feel humbled to know that a little bird racing along the beach stopping briefly to probe the sand with its slender bill could have traveled a thousand miles to get there and will do the same in reverse as the winter wanes.

We are happy to share photos and anecdotes of our day of birding. Maybe this little corner of the world wide web may inspire you to embrace being outside observing what flies and lands in your field of view. Please share your birding/outdoor stories in the comments.

Planning a birding adventure can sometimes feel as if we're plotting an intense military maneuver.  In addition to maps, guidebooks, and brochures, e-Bird is our go to for up-to-date information on birds spotted anywhere in the world. Looking at what's been recently seen in our planned destination can narrow down our search to what's known as local "hot spots." That in mind the planning for day one looks like a crazy quilt of birding locations. Day one is part driving and mostly birding. Here's what we plan to do:
 

We head south from northern Virginia well before sunrise, taking I-95, and going east around Richmond before taking route 460 which cuts at a south-east angle through the southern end of Virginia's Piedmont and into the coastal plain. Along the way we'll be stopping at Piney Grove and Big Woods Wildlife Management areas hoping to find the highly protected Red-Cockaded Woodpecker,  then continuing on to the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), before hitting the Atlantic coast at Back Bay NWR. We'll end our first day of birding on Knott's Island, NC at our niece's house which has great views of the Currituck Sound to the east and the MacKay Island NWR to the west. We've been to these places before so we have a pretty good idea of where to bird. It's a long and rigorous day we have planned for sure! And we look forward to sharing some of it with you. See you soon!