Trail 5: Neuse River Trail (Part C)

1/02/2012.  10:25 AM.

Start:  GPS N 35, 55.126, W 78, 33.602
End:   GPS N 35, 54.103, W 78, 32.436

Entrance to this section of the trail is at 10900 Bedfordtown Drive.  There is a small parking lot next to the paved access way that leads to the Neuse River Trail.  Not far down the trail from this entrance is another access point from Grassy Creek Place (GPS N 35, 55.050, W 78, 33.661), and very soon after that is the point where the Abbotts Creek Trail (Eastern Part) intersects the Neuse River Trail.  It's a fairly long walk from the Abbotts Creek intersection to the next exit point just before the 4.5 mile marker, where I turned around and began the return trek.

The sky was clear and it was around 45 degrees Fahrenheit when I arrived (this picture was taken the previous week when it was cloudy but warmer).  The treeline off to the right had some decent bird activity.  I spent about 45 minutes there working on my rather poor skills at identifying sparrows.  This part, as well as a section just beyond the Abbotts Creek Trail intersection, seemed quite good for sparrows.

I had a couple of new tools at my disposal thanks to the iPod Touch my wife gave me for Christmas.  My favorite so far is an App called iBird Explorer Pro, which I got from iTunes for $15.  It has a library of 924 North American birds and a fantastic search engine that allowed me to narrow down the options to only North Carolina birds, and then further by all kinds of characteristics such as family, primary or secondary color, head or breast pattern, and many more.  I used it to find both common and uncommon sparrows known to have been seen in North Carolina (there are 21 of them), entered one or two additional characteristics to narrow the field further, found a likely candidate, then checked out the image as well as a few photographs to verify.  If it doesn't look quite right, you can use the "similar" button to see any other birds (whether sparrows or otherwise) with similar characteristics.  Made it much easier to narrow down the possibilities and to feel confident about the result.

I also used the $30 Sibley e-Guide App for its excellent images.  It has a search function too, though with fewer options.  The Sibley App has a couple of nice features, though, like the ability to sort birds into size categories such as "sparrow-size" or "robin-size" rather than by length in inches, as you must do with the iBird App.  Another great App is called BirdsEye.  It was $20 and uses the e-bird database to report which birds have been sighted recently in the local area.  I used this before I left home to find out which sparrows and warblers have been recently sighted around Raleigh, whether they were relatively common or rarely seen, and whether they were recently seen in the quadrant of Raleigh that includes the Neuse River Trail.  If I had an iPhone instead of an iPod, I could look all of this up while in the field.  But even without the ability to get online in the field, the App was very useful.  With these Apps, I only pulled my books out a couple of times.

Birds Sighted Along Access Path:  GPS coordinates are not repeated if species are sighted within a couple of hundred feet of each other.

Chipping Sparrow:  GPS N 35, 55.126, W 78, 33.602.  I thought I had identified a group of these last time, then got nervous because they are not supposed to be winter residents here according to a map on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology site.  However, the BirdsEye App has them identified in several places around Raleigh over the past two weeks, and a few sightings in this area of the city.  I had a long time to watch them and make certain, so now I'm ready to add them to the Greenway list.

Downy Woodpecker:  Saw two or three of these in total.  However, there were many fewer woodpeckers along this section of the trail than were present along Part A and Part B of the trail.

Carolina Wren:  Saw two of these today.

Around the Intersection of the Neuse River Trail with Grassy Creek Place and Abbotts Creek Trail:

Carolina Chickadee:  GPS N 35, 55.050, W 78, 33.661

Tufted Titmouse:  Only saw one of these today.  Saw many more on previous days.

Brown Creeper:  Another new one for the Greenway list.

Just Past the Abbotts Creek Trail Intersection:

White Throated Sparrow:  GPS N 35, 54.858, W 78, 33.621

Song Sparrow:  Got a good look at the spot on the breast.  Met another pair of birders at this point who told me they had seen a Great Crested Flycatcher down the trail.  This was a bird I had not seen before.  More on that later.

Along the Rest of the Trail:  Things got pretty quiet by the time I left the Abbotts Creek intersection (around noon).

Dark Eyed Junco:  N 35, 54.535, W 78, 33.399

Turkey Vulture (in flight):  N 35, 54.451, W 78, 33.010

Red Headed Woodpecker:  N 35, 54.318, W 78, 32.741.  I only saw one of these today after seeing so many on my three previous outings.

New Sightings on the Return Trip:

American Crow:  N 35, 54.409, W 78, 32.935

Eastern Bluebird:  N 35, 54.784, W 78, 33.613

Great Crested Flycatcher?:  N 35, 55.207, W 78, 33.589.  I was all the way back at my car ready to head home when I saw this one at about 1:30 PM.  I had taken off my jacket to put it in the car when I saw a bird with quite a bit of yellow on its body come flying from the trees to land on a short post maybe 30 feet away.  It was a little smaller than a robin, with a thinner body.  I got two good looks at the front of its body while it was on the post, with a quick check of the the iBird App in between. Unfortunately, the tail was hidden by the post while it was stationary.  It had yellow on the lower body and grey on the upper chest.  The top of the head had that pointed look, something like I remember seeing on the Black Phoebe in Arizona.  When it flew out from one post and back to another, it's flight had the acrobatic flycatcher look to it.  I didn't get a chance to confirm rufous color on the tail, but both the iBird App and the Sibley App suggest that this is the only likely species in this size range with these markings.  I left for home feeling confident about my identification.

The problem is that this bird is also not supposed to be here in December.  I checked e-bird for sightings in Dec-Feb for all dates and didn't find any for North Carolina.  There was a sighting in Monmouth New Jersey, much further north, in December 2007, and in Maryland in mid-November this year.  Nothing in North Carolina.  On the other hand, it looks like there are no e-bird reports along most of the Neuse River Trail for 2011, so those who do bird this trail are apparently not reporting to e-bird.

So do I count it or not?  Was it really just another bird that I am less familiar with, or has the warm fall kept these flycatchers around longer than normal?  The other pair of birders mentioned above saw one of these as well, and they seemed much more experienced than I am, based on our conversation.  I'll keep an eye on e-bird to see if anyone else reports it.  Given that it seems to be a fairly common bird here during the summer, chances are that I will pick it up later in the year anyway.

That brings the total to 13 species for this particular outing, if I exclude the Great Crested Flycatcher, and 31 for the Greenway list so far.  My lifelist has also grown by five birds.  Next time I hope to finish off the Neuse River Trail.