#284 Bird watching at Pungo Lake Refuge

To get the best view zoom the image out a bit

We had decided to go to Kentucky to get the new rig. We put down a deposit and told them we had existing plans to go to a bird refuge first. On January 4th we went to a wildlife refuge at what they call the inner banks of NC. This will be the 5th time I have visited this area of North Carolina for bird watching. This is a project that I love to do in January. It started on a Saturday afternoon TV show I saw on PBS. The name of the show was a fire at Pocosin Lake. It showed an area in North Carolina I didn't know much about. I had been out there to the Cedar Island Ferry area before which is like a moon scape. In all directions for miles just marsh grass. The Cedar Island Ferry is what is called the inner banks and it takes you to Ocracoke Island.

Towards the end of the PBS show, they spoke of how many birds are wintering there. It was in the thousands. They hang out eating lots of corn planted for them by farmers working for the refuge. They’ll be nesting later up north in the spring.

The fish and wildlife and Department of Agriculture realize that this many birds can't quite make it on nature's bounty alone. They actually offer incentives, money to farmers to grow corn and instead of harvesting it they cut it down and let it let lay the field for the birds and bears and I just think it's cool

We have been attending a meeting in Chapel Hill it is known as an ACOA.

It would be easier to understand what it's all about if you wish to look it up on the web. We found it to be very enjoyable.

We've gotten to know the folks pretty well and one day I just mentioned that our next visit was to go see the birds at Pungo Lake Refuge.

The more I talked about it the more some of them got jazzed up about it. The next thing you know we had planned a trip for January 4th for a weekend.

One of the folks was good at Airbnb and she found a nice house that they could all rent. It turns out there was enough room for us to park the RV there. The only part I didn't care for it was 45 minutes one way from the refuge. Where I normally stay is about 15 minutes away

I wanted to hang out with the folks being with them was more important than the convenience of being close so we stayed there on the property and tried to hang out a bit.

We all took off about 5:30 a.m. and went to the Refuge and got there at Sunrise

I had talked up this trip on how cool it was to see the birds so much that I was beginning to wonder when the birds were going to show up. They had not arrived at maybe 20 minutes past sunrise.

I knew they were about but I couldn't prove it.

Finally, they kind of flew over in the gigantic flocks that I had described and there was plenty of them I mean like thousands of them.

.It was really good to see them show up like I had hoped and everybody had a nice time. The road that takes it to that area was muddy and we were all in just normal cars. It seemed like on any given part of it somebody was probably going to get stuck but thank goodness we all escaped.

We hung out with the Canadian snow geese for quite a while. I wanted to show them the Tundra swans and we went on down another muddy road and there were hundreds of those so everybody had a nice time.

At around 10 or 11 we all went to have some breakfast in town at Belhaven. We met there and have a nice lunch together.

We all parted ways and I assume they went back to the big house. We went on back if nothing else to catch a nice nap. I had talked to some other friends known as Heidi and her husband Mike. They were late arriving around maybe 1. I told them that I would take a nap and meet them back around 3 at the refuge.

They hadn't seen it yet and I knew the birds would be very impressive in the evening and they were and all was wonderful.

I enjoyed being the tour guide and I know that at some point our friend Barnsley had said she heard a strange rattling in her car. I didn't know what it was but I looked under her car and the muffler had come loose from when she had tugged at me out of a mud hole. I fixed it easily enough and she was happy about that.

We all had a wonderful time and that wrapped up the bird watching for this year and it was quite a success