I birded a few areas around Kerr Lake in Mecklenburg County with Adam
D'Onofrio and Tina Trice today. While we didn't find anything terribly
exciting, we did have a few decent birds. Clyde's Pond at Dick Cross WMA
had 7 Solitary Sandpipers, 2 Spotted Sandpipers, 1 Least Sandpiper, and
several Killdeer. Tailrace had a nice flock of Cliff Swallows numbering
around 30 birds, and we spotted a Red-headed Woodpecker while driving across
the dam. There were about 10 Ring-billed Gulls on the main lake perching on
buoys.
The mudflats at Stuanton View are not very extensive yet, and the area has
been inundated with Hydrilla over the last several months. The current lake
level is 298.75' and it really needs to drop about another foot to expose a
good amount of mud. Here we found 1 fairly early Caspian Tern,
approximately 100 Great Egrets and a few mixed shorebirds including
Solitary, Spotted, Pectoral, Least, and Semipalmated Sandpipers,
Semipalmated Plovers and Killdeer.
Paul Glass
South Boston, VA
