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Lumber River Important Bird Area – May Bird Count

Authored by Erik Thomas.

Two members of the Wake Audubon Society board, Colleen Bockhahn and Erik Thomas, conducted bird counts in the Lumber River Important Bird Area (IBA) on May 1 and 2.  IBA’s are areas that provide especially extensive areas of prime bird habitat and may harbor uncommon or rare species.  Audubon North Carolina has entrusted the Wake Audubon Society with monitoring the Lumber River IBA, which covers much of the eastern half of Robeson County.  Designated points are established at which the counts take place.  Counting follows a protocol in which counters record the numbers of each species they see or hear within a ten-minute period and approximately how far away each bird was from the point.   WAS members have been monitoring the Lumber River IBA for the past nine years.

The primary goal of this trip was to find migrants.  We found a few transient species during the trip: two Black-throated Blue Warblers, an American Redstart, several Black-and-white Warblers, and one Spotted Sandpiper. For the most part, however, we found local breeding species, in which the Lumber River IBA is notably rich.  The bottomland forest warbler triumvirate of Prothonotary Warbler, Northern Parula, and Yellow-throated Warbler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

was ubiquitous.  Yellow-billed Cuckoos, Acadian and Great Crested Flycatchers, Pileated Woodpeckers, Barred Owls, Red-shouldered Hawks, and three species of vireos were frequent.  We heard Swainson’s Warblers at three different count points.  Even a few Wild Turkeys materialized.  Perhaps our biggest surprise was a Wood Stork that was soaring overhead at one count point.  One species that we did not find was the Red-headed Woodpecker, a bird that has appeared on many of our previous trips to the Lumber River IBA.  Our total for the IBA on this trip was 73 species.

The records for all of the point counts are entered into a website that Audubon North Carolina keeps.  Although this website is not publicly accessible, we also entered all the counts on eBird, so if you’re curious about what species we found at each site, just go to the eBird website (http://ebird.org/content/ebird/), click on “Explore Data,” and click on “Species Maps” to see any species or “Explore Hotspots” to see any of the individual points, which are designated as “Lumber River IBA D-01,” “Lumber River IBA D-02,” etc.