I was at Pea Island this morning for another day of birding. The tour, called North Pond Duck ID, was headed by Scott Hartley and was meteorologicaly interesting. Today was definitely the worst weather of the week, but an incredible birding day. We started out at the Pea Island NWR visitor's center and followed the south dike of North Pond to an observation overlook. From there we observed over 50 species of birds and I even got a look at my first Pine Siskin and its brethern as they flew over us, no doubt looking to get out of the rain and the cold. Because of the weather, we ended up taking a short break inside the Visitor's Center where we recharged on coffee and breakfast stuffs provided by the NWR volunteer staff. Aren't they nice people? While we waited for the front to relent I got to reading a book about bird life, it was Kenn Kauffman's "Lives of North American Birds", and it is excellent. I ended up buying it and have been driving Sarah crazy by not putting it down. I think soon she may have the crazy idea of using the pages to wrap fish or light fires to keep it from me.
After our break, Scott took us up to the north dike in North Pond and from there we saw Avocets and even a Merlin and a Peregrine. This trip to Pea Island is also proving valuable as our winter waterfowl tour weries here at work will be traveling to PINWR in December for our first tour. I hope that it is as productive then as it was today.
Be sure to check out the upswing in Avocets bill in the picture on the right.
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