Lightning Strikes Twice with Another Rare Wader at McAlpine Creek Park, NC, July 18, 2020

On June 25th I went to McAlpine Creek Park in the suburbs of Charlotte, NC to see a long-staying Reddish Egret – the first inland record for NC.  Amazingly, this bird spent 11 days in a beaver pond at the park, and I was lucky enough to not only be there on its last day, but to be in the group of birders who were the last to see it there. 

Then just 3 weeks later came reports of a Roseate Spoonbill not only in the same Park, but in the same beaver pond!  Amazing that yet another rare wader would show up in that same small pond.  Unfortunately, I didn’t notice the first posts from July 16, and only read about the sightings on the evening of the 17th.  Since I almost waited too long to see the Reddish Egret, I didn’t want to wait any longer to try for the Spoonbill.  In fact, I worried about whether overlooking the posts for a couple days had already doomed me to fail in my search for another rare inland wader.  However, always the optimist, I planned to head back to the park the next morning to give it a try.  On the bright side, given my recent trip to the park, I knew exactly where the pond was, so I didn’t need to do much research to prep for the trip.

I was out of the house by 6 AM on the 18th and started making my 2-hour trip to the Park.  I was about 30 miles away when I got a text from my local birding friend Bill Hooker that he heard that the Spoonbill was still there.  I was cautiously optimistic.  Luckily it was a Saturday so there was no rush hour traffic to deal with, and 30 minutes later I arrived in the parking lot.  Then after a brisk walk past the fishing pond I made it to the beaver pond and quickly scanned the lake.  Unfortunately, I didn’t see any waders, though lighting was challenging looking towards the morning sun so I tried not to be too worried.  I changed my angle a bit and sure enough there was the Spoonbill standing among the vegetation toward the east.  I moved to the other side of the lake and got even better and closer views.  Here are two phonescoped pictures of this most attractive bird.

 

And a picture without magnification showing the Spoonbill in the distance. 

As I watched the Spoonbill feeding it slowly made its way to almost the exact same spot where I saw the Reddish Egret a few weeks earlier.  Same part, of the same pond, at the same park, for two rare coastal waders.  Looks like lightning can strike twice.

It turns out that the Spoonbill was last seen at dawn on the 19^th.  So if I had waited another day to make the trip I would have missed the bird.  I guess it’s good to be lucky…

Roseate Spoonbill was #303 for my NC statelist.  In my statebird map below, I’ve seen this species in 3 states in its regular range (the blue shaded states), as well as three states as a rarity (tan shaded states) – SC, CT, and now NC.  Though I still need it in the 4 cross-hatched states in its regular range.

 

Reddish Egret – First Inland NC Record, Charlotte, NC, June 25, 2020

When I moved to the NC mountains I set up an eBird NC Needs Alert so that I could track and prioritize sightings that I might want to chase after.  I quickly realized that most of the sightings that popped up on the alerts were from the NC coast.  And because I’m so far west in the state, and NC is such a “long” state east to west, most of those coastal sightings were 6 or more hours away.  Needless to say, most would require quite a considerable effort to chase after.  So although I’ve continued to monitor the NC Needs Alerts, I quickly write most of them off as being too far away to chase.

And that was exactly the case when the first Needs Alert popped up for a Reddish Egret on June 15th.  At first I didn’t look at it too closely, just assuming it must be yet another un-chaseable coastal bird.  It was in Mecklenburg County which wasn’t any of the local western NC counties I was familiar with, so I just continued to assume that it must be somewhere along the coast.  But then after a few more days of the Egret showing up on the Needs Alerts something clicked in my mind – I remembered that Mecklenburg County is in the Charlotte area, within a 2-hour drive of home.  That changed everything.  This one was definitely chaseable.  But the bird was at a small regional park called McAlpine Creek Park.  During these days of the pandemic I wondered if there would be too many people around to allow for safe viewing.  I decided better safe than sorry and I’d just pass on this bird.

But then the Needs Alerts kept coming – practically haunting me with each new post of this most reliable bird.  With a bit of research I found out that not only is Reddish Egret a rarity on the coast, but this was the first inland NC record.  I finally decided that I should give it a try, and if I go in the early morning I figured I could avoid most of the crowds.  I reached out to my Cleveland County birding friend Bill Hooker to see if he might want to meet me at the park (he would only be an hour away).  Bill had planned to go, but was targeting that Saturday the 27th.  I was however aiming for Wednesday the 25^th, hoping to avoid inevitable weekend crowds, though likely to run into rush hour traffic.  Not to mention that now that I decided to chase after the Egret, I didn’t want to wait too much longer to go after it – after all the 25th, would be the 11th day in a row for this rarity.  I didn’t want to push my luck.  Bill agreed to accommodate my schedule and offered to meet me that morning at the park.  And better yet, he had a local birding contact in Greg Hays who could likely help us find the bird.  We came up with a plan for Bill to meet Greg at the park early in the morning, and they would hopefully have the Egret all scoped out and pinned down for me by the time I got there a bit later. 

On the morning of the 25th I was able to get out of the house a bit earlier than expected.  And whether it was timing, or just less people on the road during the pandemic, it turned out that the rush hour traffic never materialized.  About halfway there I got a text from Bill that he and Greg were on the bird – so I was hopeful.  Just as I arrived at the parking lot Bill and Greg came back to greet me.  Within a couple minutes they took me to the best viewing spot to see our target bird in the beaver pond.  And there was the Reddish Egret, an immature dark phase bird, right in front of us.  I got this nice phone-scoped shot as the bird practically posed for us.

And here’s a distance shot of the bird without magnification.

Reddish Egret was #302 for my NC statelist – my 7th state for this species.  Per my statebird map below, I’ve seen this species in 5 southeast states in its regular range (shaded in solid blue), and now NC and CA where it is a rarity (tan-shaded states).   I’ve yet to see it in MS and GA in its regular range (the cross-hatched states).