Beach Music

On birdsong and sea notes

A view of the salt marsh at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge

We’ve been going to sleep each night with the song of the ocean in our ears and waking up to the play of sunlight over water. Every day we look for birds. Every day we listen for new songs. We’ve been coming to this place by the sea for over thirty years now but I’ve never looked at it through the eyes of a birder before now. It changes things, makes the world even sweeter.

Yesterday, we went the the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge on the Albemarle Peninsula. The refuge consists of 152,000 acres of wetlands and wooded marshes and was created in 1984 to protect a specific wetland type called the pocosin. Pocosin wetlands are formed on thick layers of peat and are highly acidic and nutrient deficient. They support short, shrubby vegetation that is habitat for diverse species and the views are absolutely lovely.

The Alligator River Refuge is apparently one of the few places you can see the endangered red wolf in the wild. We did not see any red wolves. Or any black bears, as other visitors apparently have. Or any alligators, for that matter. We did see a lot of turtles sunning themselves on logs and a very large black snake hanging from a pine tree (its head was in a tight-looking hole in the tree and its long body dangled down the side. I wondered if he/she had gotten stuck while raiding someone’s nest). Jeff took a picture of the snake. I did not.

Mostly, our eyes were trained upwards and our ears were tuned to birdsong. We saw more Myrtle warblers (they are everywhere at OBX right now!), some pine warblers, pine siskins, brown-headed nuthatches, ruby-crowned kinglets, an Eastern Phoebe, and an American kestrel falcon. We’ve seen all these birds back home but catching sight of them here was very special.

The surrounding salt marshes were gorgeous and we saw some wading birds that I wasn’t familiar enough with to identify, though I did hear the mournful cry of a killdeer in the mix. We enjoyed the driving tour and walking slowly along the two short walking trails. It was a beautiful sunny day and just being out under the blue sky together was good medicine for our hearts. I never thought I could ever tire of seeing so many yellow-rumped warblers but by the end of our time there I was saying, into my binoculars, “Just another butter butt.” I caught myself and felt a wave of gratitude at the delight of walking under a canopy filled with the sweet “sweesweeswee” song of dozens of Myrtles.

When we returned to our little seaside condo we’re staying in this week, the ocean was at low tide and sleepy. I walked along the widening shoreline, searching for shell treasure, pausing along the way to scrawl the names of people I love in the firm sand left behind by curling waves. I let the tumbling surf carry my prayers away, into the deep, into the ocean’s listening ear.

A yellow-rumped warbler (Myrtle variety, aka “butter butt”)