After 26 years living in New England, I’ve moved to the mountains of western North Carolina. I’ve really enjoyed my birding time in the northeast, and it’s certainly tough to leave behind all my birding friends, and all those great birds and birding spots back there. I’ll especially miss my time at the coast, with the closest coastline being just an hour and 15 minutes away. Over the years I was able to amass 2,077 “total ticks” in the 6 New England states. However, as a result, I was a victim of my own successes with very few regular species to hope for as potential new statebirds. Plus even the rarities were becoming few and far between.
So now it’s time to start learning about the birds of my new region. Similar to New England, there are a number of states nearby - I’m only about 30 minutes from the SC stateline, an hour from TN, and within 2 hours of northern GA. So once I can get settled in, I can begin to focus on the southern Appalachians in general and not just western NC. One key difference I will need to get used to is my limited access to the coast, with the nearest coastline about 3 ½ hours away. Although coastal trips are still feasible, especially as part of a 2- or 3-day trip to search for multiple targets, it’s not likely that I will be heading to the coast to chase a single rarity like I could in much of New England.
And speaking of targets, I have quite a number of them in my new area. My lists in each of the states in the region are already pretty good -
North Carolina – 251
South Carolina – 232
Tennessee – 237
Georgia – 233
But in each case I’m only a little over the old ABA reportable threshold (half of the total statelist) – my TN list is the best at 33 over the threshold. By comparison, when I left New England I was between 90 and 170 over the ABA thresholds in each of the 6 New England states. Obviously I have many more possible statebirds in the southeast than in New England, including a number of relatively easy ones.
I haven’t done a lot of birding yet in my new area, but I’ve already added 9 new species to my NC list. The first two were while on a house-hunting trip in April – Broad-winged Hawk and Cerulean Warbler. On that trip, with next to no real birding time, I had more than 60 species as we visited open houses throughout the region,
By far most of my NC birding so far has been in my own yard. I live on the side of heavily wooded mountain (Lewis Mountain) in Hendersonville, which is surrounded by agricultural land. My lot has woods on two sides and I’ve found many migrants passing through the yard especially along those wooded edges. Perhaps the mountain is enough of an oasis of woodlands to concentrate the migrants. In the first month living here I’ve accumulated a yard list of 70 species, including 17 warbler species. Four have been new for my NC state list - Blue-winged Warbler, Mississippi Kite, Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, and Golden-winged Warbler. The Kites were perhaps my favorite sighting – a flock of 16 birds that migrated by high overhead.
There are also a number of good birding spots just a short drive away. For instance, I’ve made a few stops at a nearby sod farm, and have found a Buff-breasted Sandpiper and two American Golden-Plovers, both new for my statelist. Plus I’ve attended a couple field trips for the local Audubon chapter- adding Bay-breasted Warbler as a new statebird on one of those trips (I later had several in my yard). And I can’t wait to start exploring the hotspots in the higher elevations in the mountains.
Several of my new NC statebirds were relatively common species that I hope to be able to add in other states nearby. For instance, I still need Golden-winged Warbler in South Carolina and Georgia as a regular migrant and a local breeder (see my statebird map below). By comparison it was quite a rarity in New England.
Whereas there were others like Mississippi Kite where NC was one of the last states in the region where I still needed that species.
That brings me up to 260 in NC, and counting…
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