Venture to Polk County, NC

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

By not living in Polk County, one misses the current “happenings”, so a visitto the pond at FENCE was different. We got quite a surprise to see heavyequipment working on a major rehabilitation of Blockhouse Creek. Needlessto say it was hardly a good experience, although at least 3 male CommonYellowthroats were already back on territory. A walk up through the still-greening woodlands produced several Blue-gray Gnatcatchers that were very responsive to pishing, as well as several Yellow-rumped Warblersstarting to acquire their breeding garb. By now it had become a beautifulday and to sit atop the hill and just enjoy the gentle spring breezes wasreally pleasant. There was even some migration going on with smallnumbers of Cedar Waxwing, Barn and Northern Rough-winged Swallow and even a fairly obliging Vesper Sparrow that allowed us scope views.  The surprise of the day was a Loggerhead Shrike found by Jerry, atop a tall tulip tree. Not the place to regularly find a shrike. Despite this fact, we had great scope views of this locally very uncommon bird.

Talking of Vesper Sparrows- they must have been moving through at the moment because at least 2 were feeding along the road at Dave Slater’s Turf Farm on River Road. Nice to see and get great looks at several of these uncommon sparrows. By this time of the day it was warming up which always spells doom for afternoon birding. However some of the wintering sparrows were still around and we got good views of Swamp, Song and Savannah Sparrows. A female American Kestrel was a pleasant surprise and may have been a winter migrant or one of the local breeding birds. However, there are very few pairs still breeding in Polk County but this southern race is decidedly uncommon in the Southern Foothills of North Carolina. We finished the day with a short stop on Howard Gap Road on the way to Saluda. This short stretch of what was an unpaved road has been devastated by the Department of Transportation. What wre banks of wildflowers have been turned into grass and landslides- so this is progress! Despite this fact, we did have great views of 2 Pileated Woodpeckers and a recently arrived Black-throated Green Warbler- stunning!It was indeed, a fine day in Polk County with some great birding and surprisingly quite a few butterflies around.

Simon Thompson

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